Reuters: Regulatory News: UPDATE 1-Watchdog sees complications with Liberty-Kabel deal

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UPDATE 1-Watchdog sees complications with Liberty-Kabel deal Jun 26th 2013, 18:16 Wed Jun 26, 2013 2:16pm EDT * Liberty Global still evaluating options - sources * Court casts doubts over competition remedies for Liberty-KabelBW deal BONN, Germany, June 26 (Reuters) - A takeover of Kabel Deutschland by rival Liberty Global would be more complicated from an anti-trust point of view than Kabel's acquisition by Vodafone, Germany's cartel office said on Wednesday. Vodafone on Monday agreed to buy Kabel Deutschland, Germany's largest cable operator, for 7.7 billion euros ($10.1 billion), beating a rival approach made by Liberty. But if Liberty were to return with a counter bid it would face difficulties due to competition issues, the head of the German cartel office said. "Without any doubt anti-trust problems will arise in the case of a merger between Liberty Global and Kabel Deutschland," Andreas Mundt told reporters at a press conference in Bonn. Mundt also said that Liberty's 3.16 billion-euro ($4.13 billion) takeover of smaller peer KabelBW was approved in 2011 only after far-reaching conditions were set to satisfy the regulator, since it already owned Unity Media, Germany's second-largest cable operator. Liberty is still considering its options following the Vodafone offer for Kabel Deutschland, a person familiar with the deliberations told Reuters. However, Liberty may still face a setback in its takeover of KabelBW as Deutsche Telekom challenged the approval decision last year in a court case which opened on Wednesday. Liberty Global and Kabel Deutschland have been winning customers from Deutsche Telekom with their expansion into broadband. Their cable lines, designed to deliver TV to homes, have been upgraded to carry voice calls and Internet at speeds often five times faster than competing services offered by Deutsche Telekom and others. During the court hearing in Duesseldorf on Wednesday the terms of the KabelBW deal were closely questioned again, a spokesman for the court said. "The president of the court has indicated that there are doubts whether the remedies, demanded by the cartel office, are sufficient to prevent a dominant position," the spokesman said. The court will rule on the case on July 12 and could refer the case back to the cartel office, the spokesman said. Liberty and Deutsche Telekom declined to comment. Liberty has been the most active buyer in Europe in the last few months, snapping up UK's Virgin Media in February this year and increasing its stake in Dutch group Ziggo in March. In February Germany's competition regulator blocked Kabel Deutschland's bid to take over smaller Berlin-based cable group Telecolumbus for 618 million euros. In prior German cable deals regulators have required remedies to consolidation such as making it easier for housing associations to switch TV providers and ending the encryption on cable delivery of free-to-view terrestrial television programmes. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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