Morning all, Craig McGlashan here on Europe Wire duty from the London newsroom. The European Commission plans to finalize the review process of its draft merger guidelines in the fourth quarter. Ahead of that, PE Hub's Nina Lindholm spoke to Jennifer Storey, partner at Clifford Chance, and Michael Engel, partner in White & Case's global antitrust practice to find out what the proposed changes could mean for private equity dealmaking.

In fresh deal news, we take a look at the latest area of financial services that private equity seeks to modernize via tech: securities finance. Apax Digital, the growth equity arm of Apax Partners, has agreed to become the majority shareholder in Wematch.live, a London-based technology platform for securities finance and capital markets workflows. Modernization

The European Commission's draft merger guidelines, published earlier this year, have caused speculation about whether they signal a more radically permissive approach to consolidation. PE Hub caught up with Jennifer Storey, partner at Clifford Chance, and Michael Engel, partner in White & Case's global antitrust practice, to get a reality check on the proposed changes' impact on dealmaking ahead of the Commission's plan to finalize the review process in the fourth quarter of 2026.

While the draft guidelines do not change the underlying legal test for merger control, they do "modernize the Commission's framework for assessing transactions and broaden the factors it will weigh during reviews," said Engel. For private equity investors, this could create greater scope to demonstrate that transactions deliver benefits through scale, investment, innovation and resilience, rather than just relying on traditional competition arguments, according to Engel. "Those benefits will still need to be evidenced, so the changes should be seen as creating additional arguments for merging parties rather than signaling a fundamentally permissive approach to deal approval."

This view is in line with what Mary Wilks, anti-trust partner at law firm Proskauer, told PE Hub in May. Wilks described the draft guidelines as "broadly positive" for private equity transactions with potential competition concerns. Acquirors that do come under scrutiny would have a "more flexible way of arguing their positive case for a merger," said Wilks at the time. However, there are some "less positive developments" in the draft guidelines that would make reviews "potentially more painful without material gain for the Commission," said Clifford Chance's Storey. These developments are particularly around minority shareholdings and common institutional ownership, she added. "We have made submissions to the Commission on those issues."

Storey has not seen any evidence of any anti-PE sentiment. "But even if ownership as low as 5 percent is something that would be investigated as a matter of course – that's quite concerning."

Even with these concerns, Storey does not expect major changes. "The vast majority of deals are already cleared by the Commission without issue," she said. "In that context, my view is that this is not going to significantly impact PE deals."