News
Companies aim to complete merger by end of 2016 in bid to ramp up rivalry with KPN.
The European Commission will decide by 19 July whether to approve Liberty Global and Vodafone’s planned merger in the Netherlands, it emerged this week.
According to the Commission’s Website, the two companies sent formal notification of the transaction to the Commission on Tuesday. The 19 July deadline is provisional, and a decision could be postponed if the authorities elect to investigate the deal’s potential impact on competition.
Vodafone and Liberty Global – which offers cable broadband and TV services in the Netherlands under the Ziggo brand – agreed to combine their businesses into a 50:50 joint venture in February.
The merger brings together the country’s second-largest mobile operator and its largest cableco in a bid to mount a stronger challenge to incumbent KPN.
Recent history means it is anyone’s guess whether the Commission will investigate.
In the U.K., fixed-line incumbent BT’s acquisition of mobile market leader EE was waved through by local competition authorities without any remedies being applied, but the European Commission opted to block 3UK’s proposed acquisition of O2 on competition grounds.
Back to the Netherlands, and when Liberty Global agreed to acquire Ziggo in 2014 with a view to merging it with its local unit UPC, thereby creating a nationwide cableco, the EC investigated the potential impact on content rights and retail broadband competition, and eventually approved the deal.
The overlap between Ziggo and Vodafone is less pronounced. Ziggo is primarily a fixed-line broadband and TV player with an MVNO service hosted by Vodafone, while Vodafone is predominantly a mobile provider that also offers fixed Internet and TV services.
With that in mind, perhaps the one prediction we can make is that the EC’s 19 July deadline will probably be pushed back.
