Brussels, 02/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Monday, the Commission authorised the planned creation of a joint venture between IBM Italia and Business Solutions, the Fiat holding, in the field of IT services in Italy. The joint venture will have three distinct legal entities to which IBM and Fiat will respectively bring five and three sectors of activity, and it will offer IT services both to the Fiat group and to third parties. The Commission reached the conclusion that the European and Italian market for IT and IT management services remains sufficiently competitive, since the powerful actors such as Telecom Italy, EDS, Debis and Elsage are present. The Commission also feels that the markets concerned are expected to grow due to the sub-contracting policies that should be practised by the large telecommunications, public services and financial services companies.