Brussels, 20/12/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has decided to appeal the decision of the Court of First Instance (CFI) which, on 25 October this year, had cancelled its decision to ban the merger between the companies Tetra Laval and Sidel. The Commission considers that the judgement given poses problems on several aspects of its work regarding merger control.
Furthermore, the Commission opened an inquiry concerning the joint sale of media rights for British Premier League football matches. It considers the joint sale of these rights is equivalent to a system of price fixing that would be detrimental for the competition situation.
Finally, the Commission authorised the following operations:
- acquisition of the Gherman brewery Brauergilde by the Belgian group, Interbrew;
- acquisition of Kraftwerke Laufenburg by EnBW (electricity);
- acquisition of the German sanitation material producer Hansgrohe by American Masco;
- acquisition of Associated Oil Packers by Cargill in the vegetable oil sector;
- acquisition of part of a French chemical group, Rhodia, by Bain Capital;
- the creation of two joint companies between Linde and Komatsu in the helium sector.
EUROPE will come back to these decisions in greater detail.