Brussels, 06/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - As we have indicated, on Wednesday, the European Commission gave the go-ahead to a proposed joint venture between the Fidis company, owned by Fiat, and the Sei company, controlled by the Italian electricity company, Enel. This venture will provide long term hiring services of light and heavy goods vehicles, as well as vehicle fleet management services in Italy.
Fidis and Sei will provide the joint venture with a fleet of cars and light commercial vehicles as well as the contract rights for long term and other hiring services. Fidis will provide the fleet management contracts, whilst Sei will make available its heavy goods vehicles, as well ass long term and related hiring services. No overlapping in the fleet management side will occur because Sei will not be providing any staff for the service. As well as the Fiat activities that Fidis will bring to the joint venture in the long-term car and light commercial vehicle hire service, Sei will only be providing an additional segment of this service, which accounts for around 2% of the Italian market. Sei itself will not even be active in this part of the market and the Fiat group as a whole will be operating in the sector at a significantly reduced level. Fiat will remain a player on the long-term heavy goods vehicle hire market with a share of around 2%. Sei will not be bringing more than a 15% share of this market and intends withdrawing from this sector. According to the European Executive, the operation will not mean the new enterprise exercising any excessive power in this sector, given that the barriers to entering this market are low and other relevant players, such as Arval, Axus, GE Capital Servie and Europcar will remain active on the relevant markets.