Brussels, 11/11/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 11 November, the European Commission cleared the proposed acquisition of French software vendor ILOG S.A. by the US company International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
The Commission's investigation noted that the proposed transaction would give rise to some horizontal overlaps in the wide software category of “application development and deployment” and in supply chain management applications. It confirmed, however, that these overlaps were limited and that merged entity would continue to face effective competition. Vertical and conglomerate links exist between the parties' activities, as ILOG's business rules management software products can be embedded in IBM's business process management products. However, the Commission found that the merged entity would neither have the ability nor the incentive to restrict access to ILOG's products because several competitors supply similar software products. The Commission also found that the merged company would be unlikely to engage in a strategy of closing off customers by denying competitors of ILOG access to IBM's demand for their products, given the existence of alternative sales channels and IBM's limited importance as a customer for software products of ILOG and its competitors. Finally, adding ILOG's products to IBM's existing software portfolio would not raise any concerns about conglomerate effects. (C.D./transl.rt)