The European Commission will announce its intention to carry out an in-depth investigation of Telefonica Germany’s proposed EUR 8.6 billion takeover of E-Plus next week, reports Reuters, citing three unnamed sources familiar with the matter. The EC will thus reject a request by Germany's Federal Cartel Office that the case be referred to the German competition authority for investigation. Telefonica announced its proposed takeover of KPN’s German mobile unit E-Plus in July, a deal that would create the largest operator in Germany, ahead of Deutsche Telecom and Vodafone Germany. At the end of October the Spanish group applied to the European Commission for clearance of the merger.
The EU competition regulator originally set a 06 December deadline for its preliminary review of the deal, but extended that to 20 December 20 to consider the German Federal Cartel Office’s request to take over the case. If confirmed, the EC’s investigation would take around 90 working days, but may be extended by a few more weeks.
