EU Halts Review Of Orange-Jazztel Deal

(RTTNews) - The European Commission has suspended for a second time its antitrust probe into French telecom major Orange SA's proposed €3.4 billion acquisition of Spanish broadband and cellphone operator Jazztel SA, as the companies failed to provide relevant information on the deal.

The commission previously suspended the probe for a week in January.

"The clock has been stopped" on the Orange-Jazztel deal since March 4. Information is missing from the file that we require before resuming the investigation," the Wall Street Journal quoted a spokeswoman of the Commission as saying.

The Commission had previously set a April 30 deadline to decide on the merger.

The proposed deal will create the second largest fixed-line broadband operator and one of the major players in the mobile segment in Spain that will enable the combined entity to provide convergent offers to its customers.

The deal will also enable Orange to accelerate its growth in the highly-competitive Spanish telecom market, where it faces increasing price competition from rivals such as Telefonica SA and Spanish cable operator Grupo Corporativo Ono SA, which was acquired by British telecom giant Vodafone Group plc.