Navitaire / Amadeus Cleared European Commission Merger

In January 2016, the European Commission approved the $830 million transaction by which Amadeus acquired Navitaire, after a Phase I investigation. Both parties are active worldwide in the provision of Passenger Service Systems and IT tools used by airlines to internally manage reservations, inventory, and departure control. The transaction needed filing in multiple jurisdictions, including the U.S., Brazil and the European Union.

Compass Lexecon provided an economic assessment of the transaction. We conducted an analysis of the parties' bidding data, as well as an overlap and switching analysis to show that competition between Amadeus and Navitaire was already limited before the merger. The European Commission concluded that the companies' IT solutions targeted different types of airlines and were therefore complementary.

The Compass Lexecon team included Jorge Padilla, Elena Zoido, Nadine Watson, Soledad Pereiras, Guillaume Duquesne, Bruno Vidal, Raquel Diez, Bernardo Sarmento, Jaime Coronado, and Sofia Galan.