Bundeskartellamt clears acquisition of Weiland bookstore chain by Weltbild and Hugendubel subject to divestment

DBH Buchhandels GmbH & Co. KG, a joint venture of Weltbild and Hugendubel, may take over the Weiland bookstore chain subject to the condition that a Weiland bookshop in Hannover is sold to an independent third party. DBH is Germany’s largest bookstore chain with more than 400 outlets. It is active both in the traditional full-line bookselling sector (Hugendubel, Habel) and in the stationary mail order / remainder bookselling sector (Weltbild Plus, Wohlthat). In Northern Germany Weiland operates 21 full-line retail bookshops.

In Hannover the companies are represented by one large bookshop each, i.e. Schmorl (Hugendubel) and Weiland. The merger would therefore have created a dominant position in the regional market for the book retail trade and the full-line book retail trade in Hannover, respectively. The sale of the Weiland bookshop prevents the creation of a dominant position so that the merger could be cleared subject to the above condition.

This was the first time the Bundeskartellamt undertook an in-depth examination of the bookselling markets. To help determine the market’s structure it questioned more than 80 companies which have at least one branch in the relevant geographic market. As price competition is excluded by the law on resale price maintenance for books the investigations focused on the analysis of the so-called “quality competition”. This includes factors such as the range and depth of the product range on the shelf and in the warehouse, book presentations, customer service, order facilities, authors’ readings and book signing events.

The merger of DBH and Weiland is part of a larger wave of concentrations in the book retail trade. It is also to some extent due to the law on resale price maintenance for books, which prevents price competition in a large part of the product range, that booksellers, in particular large bookselling chains which have better purchase conditions, have been able to acquire smaller bookselling chains in the last few years.