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(Adds European Commission comment, fresh Court comment)
By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS, May 28 (Reuters) - CK Hutchison Holdings
has won its challenge against an EU antitrust decision blocking
its 10.3 billion pound ($12.6 billion) bid to buy O2 UK from
Spain's Telefonica in 2016.
Thursday's ruling by the Luxembourg-based General Court
marks a rare setback for the European Commission's competition
watchdog but will cheer a telecoms industry seeking a looser
rein on mergers aimed at sharing heavy 5G investments.
Retired billionaire Li Ka-shing's conglomerate had aimed to
become Britain's biggest mobile telecoms network operator by
combining its Three UK with O2 to compete against BT Group's
EE and Vodafone.
The 2016 deal, however, raised red flags with EU competition
enforcers, wary of telecoms mergers that reduce the number of
players from four to three and could push up prices. Hutchison
subsequently appealed in court against the Commission's decision
to veto the deal.
The General Court annulled the EU ruling, saying the
watchdog had failed to prove that the merged company would harm
competition or that prices would have increased.
"The Commission had not succeeded in proving that the
notified concentration would generate non-coordinated effects
capable of constituting significant impediments to effective
competition, whether on the retail market, under the first and
second theories of harm, or on the wholesale market," the judges
said.
The court also said the Commission had confused several
concepts and "considerably widened the scope of the rules on
concentrations of undertakings and distorted the concept of
important competitive force".
The Commission said it would carefully analyse the judgment
before decising whether to appeal at Europe's highest court, the
EU Court of Justice.
Hutchison had argued that the European Commission had erred
in predicting that the deal would push up prices and that it did
not properly assess concessions offered to address competition
concerns.
($1 = 0.8151 pounds)
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee
Editing by David Goodman)
