Merger Phenomena In Digital Economy: Uber-Grab Competition Tell-Tale In Malaysia

Angayar Kanni Ramaiah
2020 unpublished
The marriage of two-leading ride-hailing digital platforms, Grab Holdings Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. had been implicated as a strategic merger tell-tale of two prominent digital firms to significantly undermine the competition and consumer welfare in South East Asia's (SEA) consumer transportation industry. Although Malaysia has enacted Competition Act 2010 (CA 2010) under the initiative of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) agreement 2015 to develop the regional economic development and
more » ... e the competitive edge, it falls short to include merger control provision. Henceforth the Grab-Uber merger telltale challenged the CA 2010 and predicted to potentially reduce the competition by enabling unfair practices that can tantamount to abuse of market dominance and harmful merger leading to algorithmic abuse, increase in price and reduce in consumer choice. Therefore, the Malaysia Competition Commission (MYCC) as the entrusted regulator to monitor the national anti-competitive developments on the forefront to control this digital giant's merger as parens patriae is questionable. The paper explores the MyCC jurisdictional issue and adverse effect of the regulatory gap on merger control under the CA 2010 in consideration of digital merger phenomenon generally and specifically with reference to Grab-Uber case in Malaysia.
doi:10.15405/epsbs.2020.10.56 fatcat:n3ifq43zcfb3npvk4agk5rf56y