On Thursday 30 May, the European Commission announced that it had unconditionally approved the acquisition of NetCo (Italy) by the investment company KKR & Co. Inc. (USA). This includes the primary and backbone fixed-line network business of Telecom Italia S.p.A., also known as TIM, and FiberCop S.p.A. FiberCop S.p.A is a joint undertaking between TIM and KKR comprising TIM’s secondary fixed-line network.
Indeed, following its investigation into the impact of this transaction on the market for wholesale broadband access services in Italy, the Commission concluded that the merger would not significantly reduce the level of competition and would not raise any competition concerns in the European Economic Area.
On the one hand, it found that KKR would not have the ability to restrict access to infrastructure, specifically because the number of available networks and wholesale providers will stay the same for each wholesale product and because long-term agreements exist with several access seekers.
It is also of the opinion that the transaction would not increase the likelihood of coordination between NetCo and OpenFiber.
Link to case study: https://aeur.eu/f/cgh (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)