FPO:

a Pandora’s Box of Risks (and Opportunities?)

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of merger control rules throughout the world as well as policy changes in the field. As shown by Amazon’s experience in its recent 16% minority shareholding acquisition of the online restaurant delivery operator Deliveroo, this has led to new risks and challenges for merging companies, as well as significant timing issues (in big, worldwide transactions, it can now take as long as 18 months or more to get through all of the regulatory minefields). At least 130 jurisdictions in the world (of about 200) have rules which concern, directly or indirectly, merger control procedures or filing requirements, from the most experienced (U.S., European Union, and some of the Member States of the EU) to the most recent (Guatemala). The U.K. has a unique approach to merger control, and the recent Amazon / Deliveroo case, cleared in August 2020 by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) after about a year of procedure, provides a telling example of how review of internal documents may arise and even benefit the notifying party on the merits.

The topic can be anything—if you look at our Top 10 in Law Blogs posts you’ll see the subject matter ranges from cryptocurrency regulation to a monkey selfie lawsuit. Sometimes, if you’re having trouble narrowing down a focus, or want to generate more attention with your post, it can help to write about something current in the news.

Well-written blogs are clear, concise, and don’t take too long to get to the point. The cool thing about blog posts is that they can be as long as you want them to be, or as short as you want them to be; an amuse-bouche of insight, or an entree analysis. If your blog is on the LexBlog network, and you want it to be on the front page, it may be good to write at least 250 words for your posts. We’ll put shorter posts on the front page too though, especially if they’re covering breaking news.

Other tips for creating an ideal blog post: If you’re having trouble getting all your ideas to flow, go ahead and use some bullet points! Always include some sort of title image—it will show up when you share your post on social media, and a number of social media studies have shown that you get better engagement when you include images. Read over your draft before you publish—typos, or other minor grammatical errors take away from your good writing and ideas.

Last but not least, the biggest key to writing good blog posts? Be consistent. Writing blog posts, much like anything else, can become habitual, but at the beginning you’re going to need to make a concentrated effort to push yourself to write with regularity. That consistency is worth it, though, because it’s key in building up your blog and your personal brand.