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D-day looms for OMV's MOL bid


News wires

Austrian producer OMV's unsolicited bid for Hungarian rival MOL faces a test on 7 July to determine if the combination may become the dominant oil player in central Europe, a MOL official confirmed today.

The issues will be aired at a closed hearing with a senior European Commission competition official, a hearing officer, which OMV may attend but need not. Either party can request such a hearing, and MOL is a direct party.

The Commission, the European Union's top competition regulator, laid out serious doubts about the planned merger in a tough statement of objections, those who have seen the document say.

The statement of objectionsignores questions about natural gas and focuses on wholesale products made by oil refineries, which would include bitumen, heating oil, heavy fuel oil, diesel and gasoline, OMV said in a statement.

The two companies have been in a standoff since last year, when OMV first made a takeover approach to MOL:

OMV wants to join forces with MOL amid consolidation pressure from Russia and Western players, saying merging the two companies would improve their standing. MOL said the deal would destroy value for its shareholders.

OMV has urged the Commission to look at the bid in terms of a single regional market. MOL, however, has suggested the Commission examine the effects country by country in Austria, Hungary and Slovokia.

The Commission is likely to take the approach it has in the past, for example in the TotalFina-ELF Aquitaine merger in 2000, in which it looked at nothing larger than a national market.

OMV is the power player in Austria and MOL is in Hungary, but they constrain each other's pricing, according to analysts and past public evidence.

The Hungarian competition agency decided as part of a merger deal in 2000 that OMV exerted competitive pressure on MOL in parts of Hungary for diesel and fuel, a Reuters report said.

An acquisition of a lively competitor is unlikely to clear the Commission as proposed. The Commission would require remedies to solve competitive problems.

The Commission is likely to be focusing on three refineries as a key to the problems. They are Schwechat in Austria, owned by OMV, and Bratislava in Slovakia and Szazhalombatta in Hungary, both owned by MOL.

OMV could sell a refinery, or agree to share one or more of the refineries through co-processing. However, analysts told reuters that co-processing might not be enough to solve the problems.


Thursday, 26 June, 2008, 11:46 GMT  | last updated: Thursday, 26 June, 2008, 14:10 GMT

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