News

OFT clears acquisition of Inovis by GXS

On 25 June 2010, the OFT unconditionally cleared the acquisition of Inovis by GXS.

Both companies are global providers of business-to-business e-commerce services, enabling the electronic exchange of business documents such as purchase orders and invoices between companies using EDI (Electronic Data Interchange).

In 2005, the OFT referred the acquisition by GXS of G International (IBM's former EDI business) to the Competition Commission, which examined and cleared it. Since then, there has been continuing consolidation between suppliers of traditional forms of EDI messaging and continued emergence of a variety of new EDI-based technologies.

The OFT considered whether the transaction would give rise to unilateral competitive effects in EDI messaging and to vertical foreclosure of competing providers of related EDI software, but determined that the merger may not be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition in EDI messaging or EDI software.

A CRA team including Lorenzo Coppi, Andy Parkinson, and Ragvir Sabharwal assisted the parties throughout the OFT investigation.

See the OFT Decision for further information.

< Back to news archive

Print this page