Brussels, 05/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has approved the Johnson Professional Holdings division of the US company Johnson Wax Professional, active in the industrial cleaning products market, to acquire the Dutch company DiverseyLever, a world-wide industrial and institutional cleaning and hygiene products arm of the Unilever group. In 200-2001 DiverseyLever had a turnover of EUR 1.65 billion and employed a staff of 11,000. This transaction is estimated to be worth USD 1.6 billion, with Johnson Wax increasing in size by two thirds and with a future annual turnover estimated at EUR 2.9 billion. Despite a significant combined market share of cleaning and hygiene products supply to institutional customers and the fact that the new company will have a comparable size to world market leader, US company Ecolab, the Commission believes that the activities of these companies are mainly complementary and that there will be enough competition in the sectors where overlapping exists, notably with the presence of Procter & Gamble and Colgate. There is also significant scope for supply-side substitution and geographic expansion by smaller players.