Today the Ukrainian Parliament appointed Mr. Yuriy Terentyev the Chairman of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMC). Mr. Terentyev previously served as General Counsel at ArcelorMittal Ukraine. Earlier he had also worked for Metro Cash&Carry Ukraine, JT International Ukraine, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Ukraine. There are three more vacancies at the Commissioner level within the AMC, including the positions of First Deputy Chairman and Deputy Chairman, which the Government may fill shortly.
Following the drastic political and social changes that Ukraine saw in the beginning of 2014, the AMC remained one of those unlucky state bodies that benefited from the changes less than others – without a new Chairperson, with 5 Commissioners out of 9 and significant staff reductions across a number of divisions, without true leadership and clearly defined policy objectives, suffering from the extreme pressure and criticism from the Government and the Parliament that demanded better enforcement, the AMC was more struggling to survive over the past year than aiming for reforms and policy achievements. This found reflection in various aspects of regulator's activities – it could hardly manage the inflow of merger notifications and started to issue declarations of incompleteness and arbitrary initiate Phase II review more frequently, investigations became more lengthy and burdensome for the parties involved as AMC's scarce resource was clearly insufficient.
The business and legal community is greeting the appointment of Mr. Terentyev with great enthusiasm as he is the first business and not political leader to take the office. It is anticipated that the AMC will regain power and step on the road of the long-awaited reforms after appointment of the remaining three Commissioners.
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