News
Commerce Commission still wading through third-party submissions about NZ$3.44bn tie-up.
New Zealand’s Commerce Commission announced on Monday that it will decide whether to approve the merger between Vodafone and Sky by 23 February 2017.
In a brief statement, Sky Network Television said the new decision date reflects "the significant volume of material that the Commerce Commission needs to review in light of submissions from multiple third parties."
Vodafone New Zealand and Sky announced their NZ$3.44 billion tie-up in June; each company submitted a merger clearance application later that same month. At the time, both insisted that the residential broadband and pay TV markets would remain unharmed because Vodafone and Sky do not currently compete with one another.
The watchdog was due to issue a decision by 11 November, but announced at the beginning of that month that its decision date would be pushed back, after raising concerns about the potential damage the deal could cause to competition in the telco and pay TV markets.
The Commerce Commission sent a letter of unresolved issues to Vodafone and Sky at the time, and said it would update its merger review timeline at a later date.
That update was made on Monday.
"The Commission continues to take an appropriately thorough approach to this transaction and Sky accepts the need for more time to complete its deliberations," Sky said.
