The European Commission has cleared the acquisition of NDS, a supplier of software technology to the pay-TV sector, by Cisco Systems. The Commission concluded that the two companies’ portfolios of pay-TV technical services products are largely complementary, since Cisco’s activities are concentrated in the supply of hardware products, such as set-top-boxes (STBs), while NDS specialises in the provision of software components such as conditional access systems (CAS), digital rights management (DRM) software, and middleware. A CRA team led by Bob Stillman and Hristina Dantcheva assisted the parties in addressing a number of vertical and conglomerate concerns raised by the Commission. The concerns, which were related to the incentives and ability of the post-merger entity to raise the costs for its competitors in STBs or pay-TV software or to exclude competitors through bundled offers of the different components of pay-TV technical services, were dismissed by the Commission as unwarranted. The transaction was cleared at Phase I without conditions by the EC.
The Intel saga – implications for the implementation of the As Efficient Competitor Test in rebate cases
After the Court of Justice for the European Union (CJEU) Intel Judgment, one critical open question was how demanding the Court will be in the judicial review...