Until recently, the United Kingdom had no process by which companies could engage in a true merger, which is to say the absorption as opposed to the acquisition of one company by another by way of a typical M&A purchase-oriented friendly deal that typically did not engage the courts. Accordingly, pure mergers, even in the domestic context, have not historically taken place in the U.K.
The arrival of the Companies (Cross-Border Mergers) Regulations 2007 in December 2007, however, has made mergers possible in the cross-border context. The regulations implemented the European Cross-Border Mergers Directive of 2005, which allows companies incorporated in any European Economic Area (EEA) country to merge with a company or companies incorporated elsewhere in the EEA.
