Brussels, 23/02/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has called on Vodafone to give further information concerning its merger with Mannesmann, confirmed the spokesman's service for competition at the Commission. Further to remarks by third countries, "we have asked for further information concerning certain markets affected by the merger", said the spokesperson. Because of this, the operation first notified on 14 January must be notified again in coming days and the time allowed for examination is extended by four weeks. If Vodafone presents new commitments at the same time, then the time allowed will be six weeks. In a press release, Vodafone said it was confident that a detailed investigation by the Commission would not be necessary.
The leading company worldwide in mobile telephony had already undertaken to give up the third largest company on the British telephony market, Orange, acquired in October 1999 by Mannesman for about £20 billion. France Télécom first of all and then Dutch KPM (which has already formed a joint venture with Orange in Belgium) are candidates for the acquisition, followed by far, it seems, by Telecom Italia, Tim, Telefonica, as well as Japanese NTT DoCoMo and American MCI Worldcom.