26/10/11
By Karen Moss
The OFT has today cleared the proposed acquisition by Amazon.com of The Book Depository International Limited. Evidence received by the OFT during its investigation indicated that Amazon's share of the UK online book market was strong whilst The Book Depository's share of UK sales was small, accounting for between two to four per cent of online retailing of hard-copy books.
The evidence showed that there was limited pre-merger competition between Amazon and The Book Depository's own website.
While the OFT found that there was competition between Amazon and a number of other retailers using Amazon Marketplace, including The Book Depository, the evidence indicated that competition within Amazon Marketplace would continue to be strong post-merger, for a wide range of book titles.
The OFT also considered carefully whether levels of competition were different as between top selling book titles and 'deep range', less popular titles.
Amelia Fletcher, OFT chief economist and decision maker in this case, says: "Amazon has a strong position in the online retailing of books and a number of concerns were raised by third parties. However, following a thorough investigation we are satisfied that this small increment to Amazon's position does not raise competition issues. The evidence showed limited competitive constraint from The Book Depository which, in fact, has shown most growth and expansion in overseas markets rather than the UK. We concluded that the UK book market has a significant number of bestseller and deep-range suppliers both online and off-line and that existing levels of competition will be preserved after the merger. Therefore the acquisition will not be referred to the Competition Commission for further investigation."
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