| DATE | ACTION |
| 23 Oct 2024 | Commission referred the merger to the Tribunal (without the merger record) recommending a prohibition of the merger. |
| 1 Nov 2024 | Complete merger record was filed by the Commission with the Tribunal. |
| 14 Nov 2024 | Tribunal convened a pre-hearing within 10 business days to determine a timetable for the filing of intervention applications (an intervention application is a request by an interested third party to participate in the hearing of a matter); discovery applications (a discovery application is an application by a party in the proceedings for relevant documents on which they intend to rely at the hearing); dates for the filing of factual witness statements and economic expert reports, as well as dates for the hearing of the main matter. |
| 29 Nov 2024 | Tsogo Sun Limited filed its intervention application. |
| 15 Jan 2025 | Intervention application by Tsogo Sun was heard by Tribunal. |
| 20 Jan 2025 | Tribunal issued its order in the intervention application five days later, granting Tsogo Sun the right to intervene in the proceedings setting out the scope of intervention and the procedural rights afforded to Tsogo Sun. |
| 27–28 Feb 2025 | Tribunal received six applications for discovery from merger parties, the Commission and Tsogo Sun , of considerable size and scope, encompassing over 200 categories of documents over which the various parties raised disputes. At this stage, the matter already had a record of well over 50 000 documents, and it was anticipated by all concerned that the discovery process would generate thousands of more documents. The applications were as follows: - An application by the merger parties to compel discovery from the Commission;
- An application by the merger parties to compel discovery from Tsogo Sun;
- An application by Tsogo Sun to compel discovery from Sun International;
- An application by Tsogo Sun to compel discovery from Peermont;
- An application by the Commission to compel discovery from Sun International; and
- An application by the Commission to compel discovery from Peermont.
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| 14 Mar 2025 | Tribunal convened a pre-hearing concerning the discovery applications. Discovery hearing scheduled for 20 March 2025 was postponed by agreement between the parties to 3 April 2025, to allow the merger parties more time to provide outstanding documents and affidavits to Tsogo Sun regarding its discovery requests in relation to the merger parties. At the pre-hearing, the Tribunal also reserved new dates for hearing the merger (26-30 May 2025; and 9-13 June 2025). The dates were accepted by the parties and the Tribunal set down the matter for hearing. |
| 3 Apr 2025 | A Tribunal panel was ready to hear the discovery applications but the hearing was postponed to allow the parties time to narrow down their disputes in relation to the respective discovery applications. In addition, the parties agreed that, owing to the ongoing discovery disputes between them, starting the merger hearing on 26-30 May 2025 was no longer feasible. The parties agreed to keep the 9-13 June 2025 dates while seeking new dates in lieu of the May 2025 dates falling away. |
| 17 Apr 2025 | Tribunal indicated it would remove another matter from the calendar to accommodate a 10-day hearing of this merger in July. Tsogo Sun’s legal team, however, indicated it was not available in July 2025. Around that time, another matter enrolled for August 2025 was postponed by agreement between the parties in that matter. The Tribunal was therefore able to accommodate the merger hearing on 19 – 29 August 2025, which the parties accepted. |
| 23 Apr 2025 | The discovery hearing took place on 23 April 2025 (originally six, two discovery applications were settled, with four remaining). |
| 6 & 9 May 2025 | Tribunal issued its orders (rulings) in the discovery applications. In terms of the Tribunal’s orders, significant discovery still had to take place by the various parties, the bulk of which was from the merger parties at the request of the Commission and Tsogo Sun, respectively. |
| 19-30 May 2025 | Initial dates set down for the merger hearing. These dates were not utilised due to the ongoing discovery disputes between the various parties. |
| 26-30 May & 9-13 Jun 2025 | New hearing dates accepted by the parties during the 3 April discovery hearing. Parties agreed that the May 2025 dates were not feasible owing to ongoing discovery disputes. |
| 19-29 Aug 2025 | Hearing dates accepted by the parties after these dates became available on the calendar. |
| 5 Jun 2025 | Parties’ legal representatives informed the Tribunal of a Constitutional Court matter, in which they were appearing, taking precedence over Tribunal dates. The parties communicated in their correspondence, given the hierarchy between the Constitutional Court and the Tribunal that: “As far as the availability of counsel is concerned, the set down by the Constitutional Court takes precedence”. This meant that the Constitutional Court hearing would coincide with the hearing dates of 19-24 August, provided by the Tribunal. The matter could therefore not be heard by the Tribunal on these dates. |
| 25 Aug-1 Sep & 3-4 Sep 2025 | The merger parties then proposed having a hearing from 25 August – 4 September 2025, with heads of argument being filed three business days thereafter on 10 September – and closing arguments only a day later on Thursday, 11 September 2025. They further proposed that the Tribunal makes its decision on or before Monday, 15 September, thereby giving the Tribunal only two working days (including the long-stop date of 15 September) to make its decision. The Commission and Tsogo Sun objected to the merger parties’ proposal on the basis that it would be wholly unworkable and prescribed unduly truncated timelines and would significantly prejudice them. The Tribunal subsequently gave the parties hearing dates from 25 August – 1 September as well as 3-4 September 2025, with parties to prepare and file written heads of argument on 18 September 2025, given the volume of documents in the matter and taking into account 8 days of hearing (including factual and economic expert evidence), and closing argument to be heard on 2 October 2025. To accommodate the parties further, the Tribunal also agreed to sit for extended court hours each day over the 8-day period, making up for a 10-day hearing over 8 days. |
