The Bundeskartellamt has cleared the merger between the publishing groups NOZ Mediengruppe, Osnabrück, and medien:holding:nord-Gruppe (mhn), Flensburg. NOZ Mediengruppe publishes among others the daily Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. Two dailies which belong to the mhn group are Flensburger Tageblatt and Schweriner Zeitung.

With a daily circulation of all its newspapers amounting to over 450,000 copies in total, NOZ Mediengruppe is now one of the ten largest newspaper publishers in Germany.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: "Irrespective of the economic significance and the high circulation of the newspapers concerned, the merger did not raise any competition concerns. Our investigations have shown that there are no overlaps between the activities of the two publishing groups. Whilst the activities of NOZ Mediengruppe are limited to Lower Saxony, the mhn group is active in Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. The merger could therefore be cleared."