{"id":400363,"date":"2020-05-21T14:04:17","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T12:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=400363"},"modified":"2020-05-21T14:04:17","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T12:04:17","slug":"competition-commission-gives-major-cell-c-recapitalisation-deal-the-green-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/400363\/competition-commission-gives-major-cell-c-recapitalisation-deal-the-green-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Competition Commission gives major Cell C recapitalisation deal the green light"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Competition Commission\u00a0announced<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that it has issued its conditional approval for a proposed acquisition of Cell C assets by Gatsby SPV.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Commission has recommended to the Competition Tribunal to conditionally approve the proposed transaction in which Gatsby SPV intends to acquire certain assets of the mobile network operator, Cell C,\u201d the Commission said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Gatsby is a special purpose vehicle (SPV) which was created specifically to accommodate the proposed acquisition of certain Cell C assets.<\/p>\n

The organisation will be controlled by an as yet unformed trust, whose sole purpose will be to hold the issued share capital of Gatsby SPV.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Commission found that the proposed transaction is unlikely to result in a substantial prevention or lessening of competition in any relevant markets,\u201d the Commission said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Commission further found that the proposed transaction does not raise any other public interest concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the Commission did acknowledge that the transaction may raise competition concerns, including the possibility of anticompetitive information exchange if the trustees included individuals from other mobile network operators.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese concerns were not considered in the assessment of the proposed transaction because the trustees have not yet been appointed,\u201d the Commission said.<\/p>\n

To address this risk, the Commission said the proposed transaction should be approved subject to the condition that the Gatsby SPV and the trust will not be controlled by individuals from companies which compete or may compete with Cell C, as well as companies which have a customer-supplier relationship with Cell C.<\/p>\n

Cell C responds<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cell C issued a statement in response to the Competition Commission\u2019s approval of its recapitalisation, stating that it was pleased with the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an important step towards concluding a complex restructuring for the mobile operator,\u201d Cell C said.<\/p>\n

Cell C said it remains cautiously optimistic until the deal has been fully concluded and all requirements have been met.<\/p>\n

\u201cA recapitalisation is an important pillar of Cell C\u2019s turnaround strategy,\u201d said Cell C CEO Douglas Craigie Stevenson.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are being diligent and thorough to ensure it is a transaction that meets all conditions and continue to engage with all stakeholders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our minds, it is not done and there is still work to do, but we are pleased with the progress to date,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mergers of firms in distress<\/strong><\/p>\n

This follows after Competition Commission Commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele\u00a0told the portfolio committee<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on Trade and Industry on 20 May that they have been working on mergers of firms in distress.<\/p>\n

One of the prominent merger cases was related to Cell C, which Bonakele said had been in trouble for a while.<\/p>\n

One day after this statement, the transaction involving the Gatsby special purpose vehicle has been approved by the Commission.<\/p>\n

This article first appeared on MyBroadband<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Read: Job cuts expected at Cell C<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Competition Commission\u00a0announced\u00a0that it has issued its conditional approval for a proposed acquisition of Cell C assets by Gatsby SPV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":302352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[42,26],"class_list":["post-400363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-cell-c","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400363"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400373,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400363\/revisions\/400373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}