The European Commission has cleared, under the EU Mergers Regulation, the proposed acquisition of the French Vedici group of healthcare facilities by the British investment group 3i. The European Institution concluded that the acquisition would not significantly impede effective competition within the European Economic Area (EEA) or a substantial part of it.
3i controls the company Labco SAS, which owns the Labco group of bio-clinical analysis laboratories. The Vedici group consist of 23 private health establishments in western France.
According to the Commission, “There are no horizontal overlaps between the parties’ activities.
According to the Commission, “There are no horizontal overlaps between the parties’ activities.
“The proposed transaction will, however, create a vertical relationship between Vedici’s activities in the hospital care sector and the provision of bio-medical tests by the laboratories of the Labco network”.
Labco’s laboratories would not have the capacity to restrict access to the provision of such tests.
The Commission also found that hospitals belonging to the Vedici group would have no incentive to limit other laboratories’ access to them (for instance, by choosing to subcontract their requests for tests only to Labco laboratories or by entering into exclusive contracts with them), given, among other things, the vast number of other clients (individual patients and public hospitals) who also use laboratories to carry out medical tests.
For additional information about the case:
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cfm?proc_code=2_M_5805
FinSMEs
24/05/2010