Withdrawal of notification of merger between the daily newspapers WAZ/Westfälische Rundschau and Ruhr-Nachrichten in the Dortmund area

The Bundeskartellamt confirms that the media company Medienhaus Lensing (Ruhr-Nachrichten) has withdrawn its notification of plans to acquire seven local editions of the newspaper dailies Westfälische Rundschau (WR) and Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) in the Dortmund area from the media group Funke Mediengruppe.

The Bundeskartellamt had announced that it would prohibit the acquisition. The daily newspaper Ruhr-Nachrichten is the only competitor of the seven local editions in the Dortmund area which has a high circulation of newspapers. The merger would have led to a monopoly position for Lensing on most of the reader and advertising markets affected.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: "The legislator rightly places competition also in the regional press markets under special protection. Here there was the risk of a regional newspaper monopoly. We did examine the possibility of a failing company defence but found that this could not be applied."

In their notification Lensing and Funke had invoked the failing company defence principle. According to this a merger can be cleared in spite of the creation of a monopoly if the target company faces insolvency, its market position would fall to the acquiring company in any case in the event of its exit from the market and if there is no alternative purchaser.

However, the requirements for a failing company defence were not fulfilled as an imminent insolvency of the seven local editions could not be determined. For the purpose of sale these editions made up a package selected from the overall profitable newspaper chain that comprises the four sister titles WR, WAZ, WP (Westfalenpost) and NRZ (Neue Ruhr Zeitung) and which consists of around 80 local editions in North Rhine-Westphalia. These editions are published and distributed by Funke with a very high degree of market integration. Accordingly, it cannot be assumed that restructuring measures for individual editions would be necessary.

The parties to the concentration withdrew their notification after a statement of objections was issued.