Germany

[DE] Reservations Concerning RTL Group's Takeover of News Channel n-tv

IRIS 2006-3:1/20

Carmen Palzer

Institute of European Media Law (EMR), Saarbrücken/Brussels

The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartels Office), Germany's competition authority, has expressed reservations concerning the plan of RTL Television GmbH Deutschland to acquire sole ownership of news channel n-tv .

RTL, which currently owns 50% of the shares in n-tv Nachrichtenfernsehen GmbH & Co. KG, is planning to purchase the remaining 50% from CNN/Time Warner. The Bundeskartellamt claims that the merger would affect the whole television advertising market in Germany. Together with ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, the Luxembourg-based RTL Group already holds a so-called collective dominant market position, which would be protected and strengthened by its takeover of n-tv.

In addition, the Bundeskartellamt believes that the planned merger would, thanks to an additional alignment of market- and business-related elements, narrow even further the existing duopoly between the RTL and ProSiebenSat Groups.

The parties to the merger had until 16 February 2006 to respond to the warning, before the Bundeskartellamt was due to take a final decision.