Brussels, 23/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has cleared the acquisition by IBM, the information technology giant, of the consulting business of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), as it considers the operation will not have significant influence on the information and communication ("IT" services and products) technologies market. With the acquisition of PwC Consulting, IBM will expand IBM's IT services delivery portfolio by providing it with additional strategy, consulting, business process and vertical industry expertise. PwC Consulting will be merged within IBM which is already active in this field and, after the move, will employ 180, 000 becoming the biggest IT services company in the world. The Commission carefully examined the impact that the operation would have on competition and came to the conclusion that there was no risk of distortion due, on one hand, to the marginal nature of the added PwC Consulting business in terms of market share and, on the other, to the importance of serious rivals both at world level and at regional or local level in Europe. IBM will probably be able to provide the widest range of IT products and services in Europe but will not, says the Commission, be able to increase its market power through combined sales of packaged IT solutions since it holds no dominant position on any of these products or services.