The two groups announced Friday evening put an end to their project. The “structural remedies” suggested by the authority to authorize the operation took him all “industrial logic”, they regretted.
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Since the summer, they have hardly been illusions. But as long as the mass was not said, they retained a very small hope of succeeding. Eighteen months after launching the process, TF1 and M6 finally gave up their marriage.
“This decision comes after the hearing of the parties by the college of the Competition Authority [ADLC] on September 5 and 6,” said Bouygues and RTL Group on Friday September 16, after the stock market closed. During these two decisive days, the parties had reiterated the commitments they were ready to make to meet the requirements of authority – such as keeping separate advertising agencies. Opponents of this union had repeated their fears about the consequences of the operation: an ultra-dominant position on the audience of television (more than 40 %) and the advertising market (71 % would have been in their hands ), threats to the diversity of audiovisual production (40 % by them) and market prices, etc.
After listening to them, the members of the ADLC college apparently shared the conclusion drawn by the institution’s services at the end of the 400 -page investigation report submitted during the summer: to be authorized , the merger had to see the future entity departing from TF1 or M6. A remedy whose parts had never hidden in their eyes, he would empty the operation of his meaning. Also, when, Friday morning, Benoît Cœuré phoned to Thomas Rabe, the boss of Bertelsmann, and to Olivier Roussat, that of Bouygues, to reiterate this sine qua non condition, the two groups considered that they had Another choice but to throw in the towel.
lobbying with Bruno Le Maire
“This was equivalent to opposing a refusal,” translates one of the negotiators of the operation, who deplores that “we judge these cases with the eyes of the past”. Since the start of the project indeed, RTL and Bouygues have pleaded so that the definition of the “relevant market” of television advertising is reviewed, adding digital advertising, and more particularly that of video on the Internet, which has become, according to them, A direct competitor. Thus, according to their calculation, their market share would have fallen below 50 %, a much more acceptable rate for the competition gendarme. The ace. “The evolution of the uses noted at the end of the in -depth examination of this operation does not make it possible to consider that television advertising and online advertising are sufficiently substitutable from the point of view of advertisers”, decided the authority In the press release published on Friday evening, in which she “takes note” of Bouygues’ decision to stop the costs.
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