Carglass can acquire parts of ATU’s vehicle glass business

After closer examination the Bundeskartellamt has decided that the Belron Group, Carglass GmbH’s parent company, can acquire ATU’s vehicle glass business. Carglass operates around 350 service centers in Germany. Since its acquisition in 2015, the Junited Autoglas network, which includes around 300 partner companies, also belongs to Carglass. ATU’s network covers around 500 outlets. The current merger project extends in particular to the company’s insurance and large customer business.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: “Chain stores play a significant role in the vehicle services market in Germany. The merger concerns the sale of the glass business of the largest German auto-repair chain to the largest vehicle glass specialist. We have therefore examined the merger project very carefully and conducted extensive investigations. Even if Carglass can further expand its leading market position as a glass specialist, this will neither create a dominant position nor significantly impede effective competition. Firstly, customers will have alternative glass specialists and independent auto-repair centers to choose from. Secondly, they also use to a large extent the auto-repair shops of their vehicle model manufacturer.”

In its investigations the Bundeskartellamt surveyed all vehicle insurers processing a large part of these insurance claims. Most of the insurers have framework agreements with repair center operators which repair the damage for their customers; some of these agreements cover the whole of Germany. In such cases insurance customers are for the most part intentionally guided to these cooperation partners. The Bundeskartellamt therefore based its examination on the market for the repair and replacement of vehicle glass for cars and vehicles weighing up to 3.5 t and limited its assessment to the market situation nationwide.

Apart from glass specialists, independent repair centers as well as the brand-related repair centers of the vehicle manufacturers are active as competitors on the relevant market. Whereas the glass specialist Carglass is by far the largest and best-known independent supplier on the market, ATU’s glass business is only one of many vehicle services offered. However, both suppliers operate a large, extensive network of outlets throughout Germany.

The merger will result in only small market share additions for Carglass in the insurance and large customer business (in particular fleets and car rental). As the Bundeskartellamt’s investigations showed that the merger was not expected to significantly impede effective competition, the proposed acquisition could be cleared.

However, the clearance of the proposed acquisition does not cover a cooperation between the parties in the end customer/retail business which was originally planned in the longer-term. The Bundeskartellamt examined this cooperation agreement under the prohibition of restrictive agreements based on Article 101 TFEU and Section 1 of the German Competition Act, GWB. After the parties substantially limited the extent of the cooperation during the proceeding both in terms of content as well as duration, the proceeding was discontinued.