European Commission antitrust regulators have finally given their approval to Vivendi's plan to take over control of Telecom Italia (TIM) after the French media giant pledged to sell the Italian operator’s majority stake in broadcasting company Persidera. Vivendi is TIM's top shareholder with a 24 percent stake and earlier this month narrowly secured two-thirds control of the operator's board. It also built up a near 30 percent stake in Italian broadcaster Mediaset earlier this year, prompting the EC investigation into the possibility it may end up charging TV channels more for wholesale access to DTT networks. "In order to address the competition concerns identified by the Commission, Vivendi committed to divest Telecom Italia's stake in Persidera," said the EC, adding that its decision is conditional upon full compliance with the commitments.
TIM has a 70 percent stake in Persidera, the former Telecom Italia Media Broadcasting company, with the remainder held by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso. The operator’s board is due to meet to discuss the Persidera sale as well as a number of pending governance issues later this week. Earlier this month it said the Persidera sale “has not been the issue of any analysis, even preliminary, by either its management or its corporate bodies."
Vivendi released no statement on the conditional approval provided by the EC, which also confirmed that its ruling had no relevance to the separate review being conducted by Italian communications regulator Agcom. The French company is said to be considering an appeal against Agcom’s order to reduce its stake in Telecom Italia or Mediaset within 12 months and to submit a detailed proposal by mid-June.
