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CC clears Francisco Partners/G International deal

The UK Competition Commission (CC) has unconditionally cleared the completed acquisition of G International by the technology investment firm Francisco Partners. G International is IBM's former electronic data interchange (EDI) business, which will now be integrated with Global eXchange Services (GXS), a leading EDI provider owned by Francisco Partners. EDI is a business to business solution used to conduct transactions (e.g. orders and invoicing between suppliers and retailers) electronically. In its majority findings, the CC accepted that a variety of new technologies currently and prospectively continue to offer effective competition to the merged business, despite the latter's strong UK position in solutions based on the traditional EDI value-added network (VAN) model. CRA International (formerly Lexecon Ltd) provided economic assistance to GXS throughout the review of the transaction both by the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and the CC. Matthias Pflanz of CRA International appeared for GXS before the OFT and the CC.
Competition Commission Press Release

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