Shinsegae’s Emart to takeover eBay Korea as antitrust regulator approves

Shinsegae’s Emart will not be taking over eBay Korea after the local antitrust regulator finally approved the hypermarket chain’s acquisition plan. The approval was announced on Friday, Oct. 29, so the deal will now certainly push through.

According to The Korea Herald, Korea’s Fair Trade Commission stated it has reviewed and assessed if Emart’s acquisition of eBay Korea would breach any of the country’s regulations related to monopoly. The commission also checked if the companies could obstruct competition in five sectors of the retail industry, such as the online markets and physical retail businesses.

It was in June when Emart agreed to acquire an 80% stake in the Korean unit of eBay, and the value was ₩3.44 trillion won. It then submitted an application for approval at the FTC on July 21. Now the decision is out, and the regulators did not find any issues with the acquisition.

Initially, many raised concerns over the merger deal as they could dominate the market but based on the decision, there is no need to worry about it. This means that competition among the players in this industry will remain fair.

Also, after the antitrust watchdog reviewed the deal, it determined that it may actually help drive a new kind of competition in the retail business. Likewise, Korea Joongang Daily reported the FTC concluded the deal would not limit competition in e-commerce or other related markets but rather, it may give positive results.

“We concluded that concerns for limiting competition in all these categories of business are low,” the publication quoted the FTC as saying in a statement. “As a latecomer, SSG.com’s market share only stands around 3 percent, so the business combination with eBay Korea will not raise its market share significantly.

Finally, the agency added that there is no dominant online shopping business in the domestic market yet, so it is not seeing any issue with Emart’s takeover of eBay Korea. FTC also suggested that the new competition that will arise from this acquisition deal is more beneficial because it is likely to strengthen and boost online competitiveness by traditional offline retailers.