A Decade of OECD Competition Trends, Data and Insights

Transaction volumes grew over the past decade. In 2021, they reached a record high with more than 12 000 mergers notified to competition authorities. This follows a drop in 2020 due to COVID-19, when less than 9 000 filings were made. During the decade, 98% of the transactions were unconditionally cleared, 1.75% were cleared with remedies and 0.25% were prohibited. In 2024, 1 684 more mergers were notified to competition authorities than in 2015, showing the overall upward trend.

Competition enforcement is essential for maintaining fair and dynamic markets. It ensures that businesses compete on the merits of their enterprise and seeks to protect consumer welfare by preventing firms from colluding to raise prices or exploit their dominant positions. Over the past ten years, an overall downward trend in several key competition enforcement activity measures can be observed, including investigations, decisions, number of settlements and commitments, leniency applications and dawn raids. Potential explanations for the decline include priorities increasing beyond enforcement, COVID-19 disruption and the decline in leniency applications, increased complexity of enforcement cases, and increased deterrence following major cases.

Market studies are not just a useful tool to assess competition levels, they are also key for the advocacy activities of the authorities, as they may include key feedback and recommendations for relevant actors in the markets. A total of 1 561 market studies were conducted in the past decade globally, with the average number of market studies carried out per year remaining relatively constant (3 per year per jurisdiction).

While competition authorities have maintained stable merger intervention levels, in the past decade the average intervention rate remained relatively constant (between 5 and 6%) despite the increased number of mergers reviewed (around 20% increase between 2015 and 2024). The number of mergers prohibited or challenged in OECD jurisdictions, where most prohibition decisions are taken, increased. 2024 was the year with most prohibited or challenged mergers in both absolute and relative terms with respect to the total number of merger decisions.