Staples and Office Depot Merger Gets EU Approval
February 10 2016 - 7:30AM
Dow Jones News
Staples Inc. said Wednesday that it got European Union approval
to buy Office Depot Inc., as the merger of office supply giants
continues to face pushback from U.S. antitrust regulators.
Staples said if the deal closes, the combined company will
divest Office Depot's retail, online and catalog operations in
Europe.
That is a more substantial divestiture than what the European
Commission, the EU's executive body in Brussels, asked for. To
approve the merger, the Commission wanted Office Depot to sell its
European contract business and its operations in Sweden. Staples
said it would do what the Commission asked, as well as the other
European divestitures.
In January the office supply companies said they would extend
the deadline of their tie-up by about three months, as the merger
continues to face opposition from U.S. antitrust regulators.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit in December to
block the deal, arguing that a tie-up of the last large national
office-supply chains would eliminate important competition.
The lawsuit alleged the transaction would mean higher prices and
fewer options for big companies that buy office supplies in
bulk.
Earlier this month, due to the length of the merger process,
Staples took out a $2.5 billion loan to hold in escrow, instead of
just committing to borrow funds to buy Office Depot once the deal
was finished.
Staples' offer to buy rival Office Depot in a $6.3 billion deal
was announced last February, more than a year ago.
Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 10, 2016 07:15 ET (12:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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