The Austrian competition authority needs two additional weeks to assess the takeover of Hali and Svoboda by the Bene and Neudörfler consortium.
In a message on its website, the authority writes that in the past four weeks information has been obtained from 300 end users and 172 competitors at home and abroad. 82% of end-users and 63.4% of competitors responded to these requests. In addition, the BWB held extensive discussions with the parties involved.
During these discussions, various matters relating to production locations, employees, brand strategies and market shares were discussed, which have to be validated again by the BWB. At the request of the parties, the BWB will extend the investigation by 2 weeks to 26 March 2018.
Different views
Although the BWB looks at the market concentration within Austria, Grossnigg, owner of Bene and Neudörfler, believes that the competition authority should look at the market in Europe as a whole: “We have a minimal market share in the European office furniture market,” he says. In addition, Grossnigg claims that the new combination has a market share of only 25% in Austria, where the BWB counts on the basis of other reports and assumptions with a market share of 70%.
The Austrian Trend.at reported in an article a few days ago that Grossnigg has now offered the BWB that in the event of a takeover, the individual companies and production sites will continue to exist for at least three years. In addition, the bankrupt Svoboda would no longer be part of the purchase.
Whether that offer is sufficient to get the permission of the competition authorities is the question that will be answered in two weeks.