The European Commission has finally approved the £8.2bn acquisition by Linde of the UKs BOC Group.
The initial market investigation found that the proposed acquisition could have created significant competition problems by removing an important competitor of Linde on a number of gas markets.
The activities of Linde and BOC overlap on the markets for industrial and specialty gases in Poland and the UK. The transaction would create a dominant player in various Polish gas markets and would strengthen BOC’s dominant position in the UK markets.
These competition concerns are now removed by the remedy package offered by the parties, which includes the divestiture of Lindes industrial gases business in the UK, BOCs industrial and specialty gases business in Poland and contracts with Linde’s ethylene oxide customers in the UK and Ireland. The divestitures correspond to a sales volume of approximately €160m.
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