EU clears food-delivery deal with conditions
The European Commission has cleared a takeover of food-delivery company Just Eat Takeaway (JET) by Naspers, on condition that the South African technology investor complies with several binding commitments.
Naspers is proposing to take control of JET through its Dutch subsidiary Prosus, which has a 27.4% share in JET's competitor Delivery Hero.
JET and Delivery Hero both offer online food-delivery services in Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, and Spain, and the commission had expressed concern about the “structural links” between the two companies that the deal would have created.
It concluded that the deal was likely to raise “serious doubts” about its compatibility with the internal market, “in particular due to decreasing JET's incentives to compete and increasing the likelihood of co-ordination between JET and Delivery Hero”.
‘Very low percentage’
To address these concerns, Naspers has offered to significantly reduce its shareholding in Delivery Hero within 12 months and to implement a set of additional commitments.
The EU body said that, while it could not disclose the “specified very low” percentage, the sell-off and additional commitments ensured that Naspers would have no influence over, nor material interest, in Delivery Hero's commercial decisions or strategy.
As a consequence, Prosus will also no longer be Delivery Hero's largest shareholder, based on current third-party share interests.
Naspers has also pledged not to exercise the voting rights linked to its remaining low stake in Delivery Hero.
‘Clear warning’
Commissioner for competition Teresa Ribera said that the commitments would preserve both competition and consumer choice in the food-delivery sector.
“This decision also sends a clear warning to an industry with recent antitrust issues: we won’t tolerate any anti-competitive behaviour that may harm consumers,” she added.
In June, the commission fined Delivery Hero and Glovo a total of €329 million for participating in a cartel in the online food-delivery sector.