Proposed Joint Venture Between TeliaSonera and Telenor in Denmark

Compass Lexecon advised mobile network operator (MNO) Hi3G Denmark during the European Commission’s investigation of the proposed joint venture between the Danish MNOs TeliaSonera and Telenor. Following the transaction, the new entity and telecommunications incumbent TDC would have formed a symmetric duopoly accounting for more than 80% of the retail mobile telecommunications market. Hi3G was a third party to the proceedings. Compass Lexecon produced several economic analyses assessing, among other things, the likely implications of Hi3G’s lack of scale for its ability to compete and quantifying the effect of Hi3G’s capacity constraints on the pricing incentives of the merged entity. In September 2015, TeliaSonera and Telenor abandoned the proposed transaction, as they failed to agree with the Commission on commitments that would have addressed the Commission’s competition concerns. The Compass Lexecon team included Jorge Padilla, Thilo Klein, Valérie Meunier and Krishna Nandakumar, who worked closely with Thomas Wessely, Michael Bo Jaspers and Angeline Woods of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP.