EU unconditionally OKs TomTom's buy of TeleAtlas
Wed May 14, 2008 4:30am
BRUSSELS, May 14 (Reuters) - TomTom (TOM2.AS: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's biggest maker of car navigation devices, won unconditional permission from the European Commission on Wednesday to buy its main map supplier, Tele Atlas (TA.AS: Quote, Profile, Research), for 2.9 billion euros ($4.5 billion).
"The Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition," the European Union executive said in a statement, confirming a Reuters report from mid-April.
The Commission said it had focused its investigation on the ability and incentive of the merged company to increase costs for rival makers of portable navigation devices.
It also looked at whether the new company would limit access to maps and whether that might affect consumers.
"The merged company would be unlikely to pursue these strategies because its ability to restrict access to digital maps ... would be limited by the presence of an upstream competitor, Navteq," the Commission said.
"In addition, the merged company would have no incentive to restrict access to digital maps because the sales of digital maps lost by Tele Atlas would not be compensated by additional sales of" navigation devices, the Commission said. (Reporting by David Lawsky; Editing by Dale Hudson)