EU Antitrust Chief Set To Stop WorldCom-Sprint Merger

Published: 27 June 2000 y., Tuesday
European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti told reporters in Washington, D.C., he could consider accepting late proposals for a remedy but has not received any. June 18 was the deadline for the company to propose new conditions to gain European approval. The European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, is expected to vote on the merger July 12. Under a market test, regulators confirm that a remedy would serve competitors and the public interest.EU and U.S. regulators are concerned because the mammoth merger combines the second- and third-largest long-distance companies and dominant Internet backbone providers. WorldCom (stock: WCOM), Clinton, Miss., is focused on acquiring Sprint's wireless system to fill a major hole in its bundle of services, while Sprint (stock: FON), based in Kansas City, Mo., would establish a global footprint. Monti has been in the United States since last week to discuss antitrust transatlantic cooperation, including the WorldCom-Sprint merger. He has met with his counterparts, Attorney General Janet Reno, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Joel Klein, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Robert Pitofsky, and was to confer with Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard later Monday. The European Commission learned lessons from the merger two years ago between MCI (stock: MCIC) and WorldCom that restructuring conditions imposed on the combining companies must be truly effective. To gain approval, MCI sold its Internet assets to Cable and Wireless (stock: CWP), which later litigated the sale as incomplete. Even if the European Commission rejects the merger, the WorldCom and Sprint can resubmit their application and start the process over with new remedy proposals, the European antitrust chief said.
Šaltinis: TechWeb News
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.

Facebook Comments

New comment


Captcha

Associated articles

Siebel Strengthens IBM, Microsoft Alliances

More than a year after it first revealed its "separate but equal" integration partnerships with Microsoft and IBM, Siebel says progress has been made in both endeavors more »

New Lawsuit Hits VeriSign and ICANN

A group of eight Internet domain name registrars has filed suit against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and VeriSign more »

search.lt news

search.lt presents newest links more »

Bill Gates Outlines Technology Vision to Help Stop Spam

Microsoft Outlines Policy and Technical Proposals Aimed at Helping Contain The Spam Problem, Including the Development of Caller ID for E-Mail more »

Towards to the leading IT positions

Infobalt Association Starts OUTSOURCE2LITHUANIA Project more »

Hi-tech criminals target UK firms

British businesses are under siege by criminals and vandals using technology for financial gain or to cause havoc more »

The new services

HP points new weapons against virus, worm attacks more »

search.lt news

search.lt presents newest links more »

W3C adopts DARPA language

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency this month announced that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) approved a computer language based on DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) as an international standard more »

IBM to launch MS Office for Linux

Microsoft denies it is collaborating with Big Blue on Office migration more »