Kpn shareholders voted to sell e-plus to telefonica

Before also the mexican grobaktionar america movil had given up his resistance.

KPN receives five billion euros in cash and a 20.5 percent stake in the munich-based company from telefonica deutschland. KPN announced the sale, worth a total of 8.1 billion euros, in july.

E-plus and O2 together have around 40 million customers in germany. This enabled the new company to overtake the previous leaders deutsche telekom and vodafone. At the same time, there are now only three network operators instead of a rough four.

Now the competition haters have their say. In view of the grossness of the deal, the EU commission takes over the assessment. "Because of the importance of the companies concerned at eu level, it is only logical to decide this case here in brussel," said eu competition commissioner joaquin almunia. However, the federal cartel office would like to bring the proceedings to germany.

Andreas mundt, president of the antitrust agency, now emphasized that he considers it "extremely sensible" for the eu commission to refer the case to his agency. Because it concerned "exclusively the german mobile radio market", mundt told the "kolner stadt-anzeiger" of thursday. "In the past, E-plus was a particularly price-aggressive competitor. It is obvious that such a merger would have considerable consequences for the competition and would have to be carefully examined in all its facets," he said, reiterating his previous concerns.

Now that america movil has pulled together with KPN on E-plus and O2, a further agreement between the two is still pending. The mexicans, who already hold almost 30 percent of KPN, would like to take over the entire group for 7.2 billion euros. However, the objection was met with disapproval. The KPN foundation, which can undermine the takeover with a slim majority of the voting rights, had described the offer as "hostile. According to media reports, the dutch are demanding a higher price because of the tax credit resulting from the book loss of 3.7 billion euros on the sale of E-plus. Instead of the 2.40 euros per share offered so far, they are thinking of 2.65 euros.