63Thus, any transaction or group of transactions which brings about ‘a change of control on a lasting basis’ by conferring ‘the possibility of exercising decisive influence on the undertaking concerned’ is a concentration which is deemed to have arisen for the purposes of the merger regulation. Such concentrations have the following characteristics in common: where before the operation there were two distinct undertakings for a given economic activity, there will only be one after it. Unlike in the case of a merger in which one of the two undertakings concerned ceases to exist, the Commission thus has to determine whether the result of the implementation of the concentration is to confer on one of the undertakings the power to control the other, that is to say a power which it did not previously hold. That power to control is the possibility of exercising decisive influence on an undertaking, in particular where the undertaking with that power is able to impose choices on the other in relation to its strategic decisions.
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