Brussels, 15/06/2007 (Agence Europe) - On 14 June, the European Commission acknowledged the abandonment of the proposed acquisition of Denton (US) by the UK-based financial investment group HgCapital, owner of FTSS, and closed its investigation following the parties' agreement to terminate their sale and purchase agreement and to withdraw their notification of the proposed deal to the Commission.
The Commission opened an in-depth investigation into the proposed acquisition on 30 May 2007, expressing serious concerns that the deal would significantly impede effective competition in the single market by resulting in a worldwide quasi-monopoly for the supply of "crash test dummies" - a key product for the launch of new car models and for improving the safety of existing models. In addition to this horizontal issue, the Commission was concerned that the operation could have allowed the combined entity to deny competitors access to input and to information on the market for virtual dummies, which are computer simulated representations of dummies. Similar 'foreclosure' concerns had also been raised by market participants in the field of data acquisition systems, which are used to collect data on the behaviour of dummies during crash tests. The proposed deal was originally due to be notified in several member states (Germany, Spain and the UK) but HgCapital asked for the case to be referred to the Commission, to which the member states concerned had agreed. (ol)