The Competition Commission has published a government notice saying it wants to be told about small tech mergers that currently slip past mandatory notification. Its concern is acquisitions made early in a target's life, before it has generated the turnover or accumulated the assets that would trip a threshold, where the price reflects the future value of a concept, technology, intellectual property or the skills of the team.

None of that sits on a balance sheet, so none of it currently triggers a filing.

There are two triggers. The Commission wants to hear about deals where the consideration exceeds R280m, the target threshold for large mergers, including where you sell part of the business for less than R280m but the deal effectively values the whole at R280m or more.

Separately, it wants notification wherever the acquiring firm's own turnover or assets exceed R9.5bn, whatever the target's size.

The context is capacity. Parks Tau raised the thresholds from 1 May, the first change since 2017: intermediate combined from R600m to R1bn, target from R100m to R200m, large combined from R6.6bn to R9.5bn, target from R190m to R280m. Fewer deals now need filing, and the Commission is redeploying that slack. The teeth are in section 13(3), which lets it compel notification of a small merger up to six months after implementation.

Business Day reported the notice and the Commission's warning that such deals may prevent future competition or strengthen the portfolios of already dominant firms. Werksmans noted the May increases pushed some transactions down a category, exempting deals that previously required notification. In Financial Mail, Rob Rose argued the increases sit well below where they would land adjusted for inflation since 2001, so the relief is narrower than the headlines suggested.

This is the killer-acquisition debate arriving in South Africa, and it cuts both ways for founders. If you are building toward a strategic exit and your value is a team and a codebase rather than a warehouse, a R280m outcome now comes with a regulator that wants to know about it.

The Commission also relies on the public to flag deals, so a competitor can put yours in front of it. That is friction, and friction shows up in price. The other side is that this is the same mechanism that stops an incumbent buying you purely to switch you off.

Build the notification question into your term sheet timeline rather than meeting it at closing, because that six-month window means signed is not the same as settled.

You might also like our piece on how South African M&A quadrupled and who is shopping, the Wamly Series A as an example of the value regulators cannot see on a balance sheet, and Anvaya's seed funding from 3CV.

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