Brussels, 18/07/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has given its conditional green light to the purchase of Gillette by Procter & Gamble. This operation will lead to the merger of two American market leaders for consumer goods, the Commission took pains to analyse the possible effects on the market. The new group which will emerge from the operation will become one of the largest producers of consumer goods in the world, with an annual turnover close to 50 billion EUR. Procter & Gamble is well-known for its branded products, particularly in the field of health care, beauty products, children's health, family health and cleaning products. Its best-known brands are "Ariel", "Pringles", "Oil of Olaz", "Tampax", "Always", "Fairy", "Head & Shoulders" and "Pantene". Gillette is a multinational which is active in the sectors of razors and razor blades, oral healthcare products and batteries, using brand names such as "Gillette", "Oral B" and "Duracell". Further to the merger, the parties would have held 21 brands with a turnover of over a billion dollars each. Although these brands will be coming together under one flag, and the activities of the parties overlapped only for the battery-operated toothbrush market. Procter & Gamble owns the brands "Spinbrush", "Blend-a-Dent", "Blend-a-Med", "Blendi", "Crest" and "AZ", and Gillette "Oral B". In order to overcome the competition problems, Proctor and Gamble has undertaken to sell its whole "Spinbrush" toothbrush and issue licences for co-trademarks to be used on these toothbrushes, to the satisfaction of the Commission. Given the high number of brands the new outfit will own, the Commission also analysed whether the operation would give rise to so-called "conglomeration" effect (whereby a retailer might, for example, not be allowed to stock certain Proctor brands unless they also offer of a brands from the range of products of the same supplier). It also looked into whether the parties would have a negative influence on the management of decisions to allocate store space ("category management"), which would allow them to control retailers' shelving space. According to the Commission, there would be practically no anti-competitive effects because, in the first case, there is significant competition from rival companies holding a portfolio of compatible products and, for the second case, the fact remains that the retailers have the final say over their points of sale.