Europe wants another look at Telia’s move into broadcasting

Swedish telecoms group Telia wants to buy Bonnier Broadcasting but the European Commission reckons that might be bad for telly in Sweden and Finland.

Last summer Telia announced it was getting its cheque book out once more to buy Swedish company Bonnier Broadcasting, which runs TV channels in Sweden and Finland. At the time this seemed like a classic multiplay move, in which operators get into content in order to offer more complete communications bundles to their customers.

This sort of thing has taken place all over Europe for years, but the European Commission’s current mood seems to be hostile to such moves. “The in-depth investigation we are opening today aims to ensure that Telia’s proposed acquisition of Bonnier Broadcasting will not lead to higher prices for or less choice of TV channels for consumers in Finland and Sweden,” said Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

The niggle is that Telia already licenses TV channels from broadcasters to put into bundles. “The proposed acquisition of Bonnier Broadcasting by Telia Company would create a vertically integrated player in the audio-visual industry in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden,” said the EC press release.

This could mean that Telia won’t let its telco competitors license Bonnier stuff, won’t let them advertise against Bonnier stuff and could even deny access to streaming applications to customers of its competitors. Those are all reasonable concerns but surely they apply to most M&A. Furthermore you’d think anti-competitive behaviour by a telco would be a matter for national regulators.

Telia has responded by saying it figured this would happen. In a press release headlined ‘Investigation into acquisition of Bonnier Broadcasting moves into phase 2 in line with expectations’, Telia indicated it had been in the loo-p with the EC’s concerns from the start and will use this phase to put its concerns to rest. It will presumably promise to be really, really nice to its competitors if the EC let it have this one tiny little acquisition.

“A phase 2 investigation into the acquisition of Bonnier Broadcasting is fully in line with our expectations and we now look forward to continuing the constructive dialogue with the European Commission,” said Jonas Bengtsson, General Counsel at Telia. We’re confident that any concerns following the in-depth investigation will be resolved.”