Bundeskartellamt clears takeover of Readly's international business by Cafeyn Group

The Swedish media group Bonnier News Group AB intends to acquire all shares in Readly International AB based in Stockholm, Sweden. Bonnier agreed with the French Cafeyn Group SAS that
Cafeyn will be taking over Readly's international business after the acquisition. The Bundeskartellamt has cleared this takeover in the first phase of merger control.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: "Flat-rate subscription plans are the dominant pricing model for music and video streaming, whereas the distribution of digital press and
magazine content is still in a process of transformation. We have cleared the takeover after carefully reviewing Readly's strong position in the German market. Following our considerations, we
ultimately cleared the project because Cafeyn has not been active in this segment in Germany so far and the parties will remain competitors of other digital distribution channels for journalistic
content."

Bonnier is an internationally active media company which also owns book and magazine publishers. In Germany Readly offers what is called an "all you can read" service. Users pay a monthly fee in exchange for unlimited digital access to a number of different magazines and newspapers in print layout (e-papers). Cafeyn offers a similar service in various European countries, but not in
Germany.

E-paper subscriptions are often also available directly from the respective publishing houses. In addition, many publishers offer their readers digital access to contents of their magazines and newspapers in the form of so-called plus subscriptions for a monthly fee. They also make advertising-financed journalistic content available in digital form free of charge.

The Bundeskartellamt also looked into the activities of large digital companies when assessing the takeover under competition law. Apple's service "Apple News+" is similar to Readly's "all you
can read" service, but it is available only outside Germany. Besides that, Alphabet offers the services Google News and Google News Showcase to give its users aggregated access to journalistic content