The German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) has today formally asked the European Commission to refer the investigation into the sale of KPN’s E-Plus to Telefonica to the German authorities.
The EC’s 6 December 2013 deadline for the merger investigation…
The German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) has today formally asked the European Commission to refer the investigation into the sale of KPN’s E-Plus to Telefonica to the German authorities.
The EC’s 6 December 2013 deadline for the merger investigation will be extended by 10 working days to give the agency time to assess the FCO’s submission.
Approval of the referral request is at the discretion of the EC, but if it agrees it will drop its own review.
The German authority argues that the request is justified because the €8.55bn transaction exclusively affects the German mobile telecoms market.
“A referral of the case to the [FCO] would thus be the right approach,” Andreas Mundt, president of the FCO, said.
The EC has not always approved referral request in the past. When the Austrian antitrust regulator asked to review the merger of Orange Austria and Hutchison in 2012, the EC rejected the request.
TelecomFinance reported earlier this week that the FCO was about to finalise the documentation for the request and planned to send it to Brussels before the end of the week. The documents outline the regulator’s “theory of harm”, which explains why the FCO thinks the merger might have a negative effect on competition in Germany, and why it is best placed to review the proposed transaction.
