Thalia may take over buecher.de
Market concentration is taking place in the online book trade. Following Weltbild's e-reader business, Thalia is now also taking over online retailer buecher.de
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The bookstore chain Thalia may take over its insolvent competitor buecher.de. The Federal Cartel Office announced on Monday that it had approved the acquisition of the assets. It was only in September that Thalia took over parts of the Weltbild Group, including the online store and the Tolino brand e-readers sold by Weltbild. buecher.de was also part of the Weltbild Group's insolvency estate. The Augsburg-based company, which was founded more than 25 years ago, has 34 employees.
Buecher.de is an online-only retailer, while Thalia is by far the largest brick-and-mortar bookstore chain in Germany. The company has 394 stores in Germany and Austria and is also involved in 60 bookstores in Switzerland. In addition to the domain and customer relationships, the brands and domains of buecher.de will also be taken over, the Cartel Office announced.
Cartel Office sees no obstacles
In its investigation, the regulatory authority had focused primarily on the procurement market. This is where Thalia plays an important role for the publishers. However, even in the first phase of the investigation, it became clear that the increase in Thalia's market power as a result of the acquisition was only very small. Amazon is a much larger competitor in online retail, so the takeover of buecher.de is not expected to cause any competition problems.
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Looking at the market as a whole, there are also sufficient alternatives available to customers in the form of independent booksellers, other bookstore chains such as Hugendubel and online retailers. In the printed book segment, however, Thalia has considerable buying power over publishers and wholesalers. In addition, the chain has different access to end customers due to its stores in city center locations, according to the Cartel Office. Ultimately, however, this had no influence on the decision in favor of the takeover.
(mki)
