Tamedia postpones Goldbach takeover due to Weko review
The Zurich media group Tamedia must continue to be patient with its planned takeover of the media marketing company Goldbach.
Due to the ongoing review of the takeover by the Swiss Federal Competition Commission (Comco), the required clearance for the takeover is still outstanding. By law, the media group was therefore now required to submit an application for an extension of the stay of execution, as Tamedia announced on Monday.
With an order dated August 10, the Takeover Board has now approved Tamedia's extension of the postponement of the closing until October 31, 2018, the communiqué continued. Tamedia had already previously announced that the closing of the transaction would be postponed until at least September or October 2018. Trading in Goldbach shares on the second trading line will now continue for the time being.
The offer to Goldbach shareholders launched by Tamedia last December was accepted by just under 97 percent of shareholders, according to the final result in mid-April. Tamedia had offered CHF 35.50 per Goldbach share or a total of CHF 216 million. The plan is to compensate the remaining minority shareholders after completion of the takeover in the form of a cash settlement and to delist the Goldbach Group.
Possible dominant position
However, the Weko had put a spoke in Tamedia's wheel with regard to a quick takeover. In its own communiqué in May, the authority stated that there were indications that the merger would create or strengthen a dominant position. With over 50 media and digital platforms, Tamedia reaches a large part of the Swiss population in all language regions, and Goldbach holds one of the leading positions in Switzerland in the marketing of electronic media.
The Zurich media company reacted with incomprehension to the Weko's action. In August, Tamedia CEO Christoph Tonini criticized the Weko's procedure in an interview with the online portal personal.com as "unworldly. While the Weko spends months investigating whether a dominant position is emerging on the Swiss advertising market, more advertising money is flowing out to the tech groups Google and Facebook every day, he said.
Tonini is therefore unlikely to have been very pleased that the Weko announced a week ago that it was examining the planned takeover of the "Basler Zeitung" by Tamedia. Here, too, the authority stated that a possible dominant position on various markets by Tamedia could be the result. (SDA)
