FRANKFURT (Dow Jones) – The Federal Cartel Office is expecting significantly more takeovers and mergers this year than in previous years. “There is a lot of liquidity in the market, while at the same time many companies have difficulties due to corona,” said Mundt, President of the authority, of the Düsseldorf Rheinische Post (Saturday edition). The authority will also tighten its action against online companies such as Amazon and Facebook.
When examining mergers and acquisitions, Mundt expects a number of difficult proceedings in 2021. The current “mixed situation can result in not only many, but also competitively sensitive processes.” But he refuses to examine mergers only laxly because companies are in crisis because of the pandemic. “Merger control is structural control that is directed towards the future. Therefore, we must not apply any other yardstick than in the past,” said Mundt of the newspaper.
The Federal Cartel Office will critically examine if companies from China use the current turbulence to buy German companies. “In the future, we will have to be much more careful that there are no distortions of competition through government-subsidized takeovers,” said Mundt.
With a view to online corporations like Amazon and Facebook, the planned amendment to the Act against Restraints of Competition (GWB) at the beginning of the year will enable the Federal Cartel Office “to prohibit certain types of behavior, such as self-preference,” for companies with so-called overriding cross-market importance. The authority is preparing new measures to take action against the large web groups. “We are preparing intensively for the application of this new instrument,” said Mundt. He did not name the companies concerned.
Mundt wants to enforce the internal unbundling of Facebook that was initiated last year. “The fight is tough,” he told the newspaper. The authority has banned Facebook from merging customer data on Facebook itself, the two subsidiaries Whatsapp and Instagram and other external services without their consent. The ban is not yet in force due to lawsuits from the US group. “Facebook vehemently defends itself against our decision because we are taking action against the anti-competitive core of their business model,” said Mundt.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 03, 2021 04:26 ET (09:26 GMT)
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