Bundeskartellamt clears METRO/Wal-Mart merger

The Bundeskartellamt has cleared the acquisition of the self-service consumer markets operated by the US trading concern Wal-Mart by METRO AG. A total of 85 Wal-Mart sites across the whole of Germany are affected by the clearance. The European Commission, which would have been responsible for the merger due to the turnover thresholds of the companies involved, had referred the case to the Bundeskartellamt at the request of the companies concerned since it affected markets exclusively within Germany. The Bundeskartellamt was able to clear the merger without applying any obligations because it does not lead to the creation or strengthening of a dominant position in the markets concerned.
The Bundeskartellamt has examined 52 regional food retail markets, to which, apart from classical retail outlets, self-service stores, consumer markets and discounters, as forms of distribution, also belong. Since the cash&carry markets operated by METRO under its own name are attributed to the wholesale market, they did not come into consideration in the examination. The merger does not create or strengthen a dominant position in any of the regional markets.
Neither does it result in a dominant position in the national procurement market in which the companies are active as buyers, even though the food products purchased from the procurement market for METRO cash&carry markets were taken into consideration. The market shares of the parties to the merger clearly remain under one third, the threshold from which dominance can be presumed, and other competitors have at least comparatively high market shares.
The President of the Bundeskartellamt, Ulf Böge, stated: “The case is a good example of the efficient cooperation between the national competition authorities and the EU Commission. The current provisions ensure that a merger project can be examined by the best placed authority even if the formal evaluation criteria stipulate that another authority should have competence for the case. This helps to speed up proceedings and is in the interests of the companies concerned.”