The Bundeskartellamt has cleared the planned acquisition of up to 100% of the shares in and sole control of Rhön Klinikum AG, Bad Neustadt/Saale, by Asklepios Kliniken GmbH & Co. KGaA, Hamburg, in the first phase of merger control.

Asklepios and Rhön are among the largest private hospital operators in Germany, apart from Helios, a subsidiary of Fresenius. Asklepios operates a total of 160 health care centres throughout Germany, including, apart from hospitals, medical care centres and rehabilitation clinics. Rhön operates the clinics Universitätsklinikum Gießen und Marburg, Zentralklinik Bad Berka, Klinikum Frankfurt/Oder and Rhön-Klinikum Campus in Bad Neustadt.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: “The catchment areas of the vast majority of the hospital locations of Asklepios and Rhön do not overlap geographically. The two companies are only in competition with each other in the provision of acute in-patient hospital services in the Gießen/Marburg region where Rhön operates Universitätsklinikum Gießen und Marburg as the only privately run university clinic in Germany. Asklepios is also active in this region with several hospitals. However, the planned acquisition did not raise any serious competition concerns as the parties’ hospital locations are not close competitors, neither geographically nor functionally.”

Since 2012 the Bundeskartellamt has examined several acquisitions of shares in Rhön by Asklepios (see press releases dated 13 December 2012, 14 March 2013 and 30 July 2013). Over the last few years Rhön has sold a large number of hospital locations (see also press release on the Fresenius/Rhön merger project dated 20 February 2014). In 2017 the Bundeskartellamt already cleared Asklepios’ acquisition of a 25% participation in Rhön.

Background– Merger control in the hospital sector:

Irrespective of their operators, hospitals are independently active as entrepreneurs and compete with one another. Due to strict legal provisions there is almost no price competition in this sector. It is therefore the main objective of merger control to maintain competition in the quality of healthcare for patients. It is crucial to ensure that patients have sufficient local options to choose from.
In spite of the growing concentration in the hospital sector only very few mergers had to be prohibited by the Bundeskartellamt in recent years. Of the 321 transactions reviewed in total between 2003 and May 2020 only seven were prohibited. Eight merger projects were not notified after they had been critically assessed following an informal advance enquiry.