Merger control has received special attention in Israel in recent years. The Israeli Antitrust Authority (IAA) – the main body in charge of enforcing the competition rules of Israel – has made considerable efforts since the end of the 1990s to improve its merger control practice and procedure. The IAA increasingly consults the experience of other competition authorities around the word in the field of merger control to learn from procedures and relevant data gathering practices used by disparate regimes. In addition, the IAA has been an active participant in the International Competition Network (ICN) and headed at some stage its subgroup on investigative techniques in mergers.

Israeli merger control regime, however, still suffers from certain shortcomings, and there is a general lack of adequate merger control expertise in practice. Indeed, very few practitioners truly understand the regime and how it operates. On the other hand, a growing number of courts decisions were handed down in recent years which have clarified some aspects of the law in that area.