228 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM Failure to comply with the notification obligation will result in a daily fine of up to 0.1% of the consolidated national business volume of the group to which the company that failed to comply belongs. If the said calculation may not be carried out, the fine may be of up to 750,000 UM (15 million pesos). Once the prior notification system is established, the same fine shall apply to those who carried out a transaction without the Authority’s prior authorisation. It is worth mentioning that the Antitrust Law provides that the ex-ante control will become effective one year after the Authority’s creation. This means that for the time being, the current ex-post regime remains in force. An increase in the thresholds to notify an economic concentration transaction – under the same doubtful legislative technique used for penalties, Law No. 25156 provided that the authorities must be notified for their approval of all those economic concentration transactions in which the joint annual turnover of the acquiring group and the acquired company exceeded 200 million pesos. As a result of the last 18 years’ inflation, this figure has become ridiculous and many transactions, due to their size, should not be subject to such approval, with all the costs this implies for companies and the waste of resources it implies for administrative authorities. The Antitrust Law increased this threshold to 100 million UM (the variable unit value was set at 20 ARS and shall be annually adjusted), which implies an annual turnover of 2,000 ARS. This increase should result in a drastic decrease in the transactions subject to approval, which will enable the Authority to better use resources to investigate behaviours with a negative impact on competition. There was also an increase in the amounts for the application of the exception to the obligation to notify. The Antitrust Law determines that an economic concentration transaction shall not be notified, even if the threshold above mentioned is surpassed, when the amount of the transaction and the value of the relevant assets located in the Argentine Republic do not exceed, respectively, the amount of 20 million UM (400 million pesos), unless within the last 12 months of operations that jointly exceed said amount, or an amount equivalent to 60 million UM (1.2 billion pesos) in the last 36 months, have been carried out, provided that in both cases, the transactions were carried out in the same market. The Antitrust Law also determines a notification fee, the amount of which shall be set by the Executive Branch, from a minimum of 5,000 UM to a maximum of 20,000 UM.
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