Bundeskartellamt clears takeover of Berliner Verlag by M. DuMont Schauberg

The Bundeskartellamt has cleared the acquisition of sole control of the Berliner Verlag publishing house by M. DuMont Schauberg.

According to the agency, the planned concentration will not lead to the creation or strengthening of a dominant position of the companies concerned on the relevant reader and advertising markets and could therefore be cleared. Due to the different geographical areas of focus, the concentration will not create any overlaps in the publishing houses’ activities in the distribution areas affected.

Berliner Verlag publishes the “Berliner Zeitung”, “Berliner Kurier”, the city magazine “Tip” and several regional advertising newspapers. It also controls the publishing house Hamburger Morgenpost Verlag.

The Cologne publishing house M. DuMont Schauberg is active mainly in the Cologne/Bonn area with its regional subscription dailies “Kölner Stadtanzeiger” and “Kölnische Rundschau” and the tabloid “Express” and has a stake in the publishing house “Bonner Zeitungsdruckerei und Verlagsanstalt H. Neusser GmbH”. It also publishes subscription dailies in southern Saxony-Anhalt. In addition, the company has a stake in the publishing house Druck- und Verlagshaus Frankfurt am Main GmbH which publishes the “Frankfurter Rundschau” daily.

In the view of the Bundeskartellamt, due alone to the existing market structures, the acquisition will not result in a dominant position of the companies concerned on the Berlin and Hamburg reader markets for subscription dailies or over-the-counter newspapers. With the newspapers published by the Holtzbrinck and Axel Springer publishing houses there are competitors on the markets affected with comparable or even larger market shares.

Moreover, the Bundeskartellamt does not expect the merger to strengthen existing market positions on the regional markets affected. The areas of circulation of the newspapers in question are in regions which are geographically far removed from one another. Beyond this there are no other factors which would lead to a strengthening effect. In particular there is nothing to indicate that the two publishing houses could have been considered as potential competitors for one another prior to the concentration.

For these reasons no effects are to be expected which could be detrimental to competition in respect of the advertising markets concerned, the reader market for city magazines in Berlin or reader markets in the Cologne area and southern Saxony-Anhalt either.

In 2002 and again in 2004 the Bundeskartellamt had prohibited the Holtzbrinck publishing house from acquiring Berliner Verlag because the concentration would have led to a dominant position on the Berlin reader markets for subscription dailies and city magazines (see the Bundeskartellamt's press releases 12.12.2002 bzw. 04.02.2004). In 2005 the Mecom Group, led by the investor David Montgomery, acquired Berliner Verlag (Bundeskartellamt press release 25.11.2005).