European Commission officials have issued a draft decision which
will block the merger of EMI and Time Warner. EMI executives are
expected to meet the EU competition commissioner, Mario Monti, on
Monday in an attempt to save the $20 billion deal.
The concern of the Commission is that a merger between the
companies could control the market for downloading music from the
internet.
Alexander Schaub, another head competition official of the
Commission, said yesterday at a conference that regulators must act
decisively to prevent the emergence of a small group of dominant
high tech companies. He added, “The competition authorities must
adopt a carefully balanced approach to avoid interfering with the
self-regulating dynamics of competing companies while ensuring we
protect technological innovation to preserve competition to the
full.”
The Commission will also soon rule on the merger between America
Online and Time Warner.
The European Commission must vet all deals involving companies
with combined world turnover of at least five billion euros (£3
billion) and where at least two of them have sales within the EU of
at least 250 million euros (£153 billion).
