Advent-owned NielsenIQ won EU antitrust approval to acquire German market research firm GfK on the condition GfK sells its consumer panel business to address the regulator’s competition concerns.
U.S. consumer market research company NielsenIQ, which is present in more than 90 markets covering more than 90% of the world’s population, announced the deal for its German peer a year ago.
The European Commission said the sale of GfK’s global consumer panel services business, with the exclusion of its operations in Russia, and the provision of IT services and access to support functions to the buyer address competition concerns.
“They remove the overlaps existing between NielsenIQ’s and GfK’s activities in the German and Italian markets for consumer panel services as well as the possibility for NielsenIQ to foreclose competitors,” the EU competition enforcer said in a statement.
The Commission’s decision confirmed a Reuters story last week.
Source: Reuters.com