UK Competition Watchdog Provisionally Clears Virgin-O2 Merger
April 14 2021 - 1:51AM
Dow Jones News
By Adria Calatayud
The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority said Wednesday that
it has provisionally cleared the proposed merger between the U.K.
operations of John Malone's Liberty Global PLC and Telefonica
SA.
The antitrust watchdog said the combination of Liberty Global's
Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile with Telefonica's O2 was referred to
a group of independent CMA panel members for an in-depth
investigation. The inquiry group has provisionally concluded that
the deal is unlikely to lead to any substantial lessening of
competition in relation to the supply of wholesale services.
The CMA said its review focused on whether the merger could lead
to reduced competition in wholesale services, as it wasn't
concerned about overlapping retail services due to the small size
of Virgin Mobile.
The regulator said there are several reasons why the deal is
unlikely to lead to higher prices or a reduced quality of mobile
services, including the fact that there are other players in the
market offering the same leased-line services such as BT Group
PLC's Openreach.
In November, the European Commission--which originally looked
into the deal--referred a review of the proposed merger to the
British authority.
The companies agreed to the deal, which is set to create a U.K.
telecom giant worth nearly $39 billion, in May last year.
Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 14, 2021 02:36 ET (06:36 GMT)
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