28. Calls on the Commission to continue to identify and eliminate obstacles to a real internal market in particular as regards the treatment of cross-border mergers and different kinds of cross-border pooling; draws attention to the importance of tax barriers, the limited scope for applying tax concessions to external funds, the de facto double taxation of foreign funds and the interpretation of cross-border and domestic mergers and pooling as a taxable event; believes that a new legal basis is required and suggests that the Commission should be guided by the principles set out in Directives 2005/56/EC on cross-border mergers of limite ...[+++]d liability companies and 90/434/EEC on taxation of mergers;

28. Calls on the Commission to continue to identify and eliminate obstacles to a real internal market in particular as regards the treatment of cross-border mergers and different kinds of cross-border pooling; draws attention to the importance of tax barriers, the limited scope for applying tax concessions to external funds, the de facto double taxation of foreign funds and the interpretation of cross-border and domestic mergers and pooling as a taxable event; believes that a new legal basis is required and suggests that the Commission should be guided by the principles set out in Directives 2005/56/EC on cross-border mergers of limite ...[+++]d liability companies and 90/434/EEC on taxation of mergers;

28. Calls on the Commission to continue to identify and eliminate obstacles to a real internal market in particular as regards the treatment of cross- border mergers and different kinds of cross-border pooling; draws attention to the importance of tax barriers, the limited scope for applying tax concessions to external funds, the de facto double taxation of foreign funds and the interpretation of cross-border and domestic mergers and pooling as a taxable event; believes that a new legal basis is required and suggests that the Commission should be guided by the principles set out in the tenth Companies Directive and the taxation of merg ...[+++]ers directive;

In the short term there are costs to putting the two institutions together, such as merging systems, merging databases, providing common user cards, integrating our Internet sites, etc (0950) Mr. Chuck Strahl: The Heritage Canada documents also mention costs — I think it said $7.5 million for the costs.

Some witnesses pointed out that mergers often enhance growth when they are successful, but not all mergers have the positive effects envisioned, since they encounter implementation problems, clashes of corporate culture or difficulties in remembering the importance of employees or customers.

In particular, while sufficient clarity exists about the roles to be played – and the criteria to be used – by the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions regarding bank merger proposals, they argued for a clear indication from the federal government about the probability of bank mergers being approved in the near future, and for clear guidelines about the public interest requirements that would have to be met for approval of any particular proposal.