Romania's Competition Council clears eMAG’s merger with Hungarian competitor

Romania’s Competition Council announced on June 6 that it authorized the transaction by which Dante International, the owner of the Romanian online retail platform eMAG, took over its Hungarian peer Extreme Digital.

“This operation does not raise significant obstacles to effective competition on the Romanian market or a segment of it, by creating or strengthening a dominant position,” the authority said in a statement.

Extreme Digital is a retailer of consumer goods, active mainly on the Hungarian market, where it operates through the edigital.hu platform and through a number of physical stores. The company also operates in other Central and Eastern European countries, including Romania.

In March, eMAG announced that its Hungarian subsidiary would merge with Extreme Digital, the biggest online retailer in the neighboring country. Following the merger, eMAG Romania will become the majority shareholder of the new entity, with 52% of the shares. Extreme Digital shareholders will hold the remaining 48% stake.

The merger allows eMAG to expand to countries in the region where Extreme Digital is already present, namely the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria.

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