On 25 November, the Federal Cartel Office gave its conditional approval of the Austrian XXXLutz group’s planned acquisition of a 50 % stake in the two furniture retailers Tejo Möbel and Roller belonging to Tessner Holding. The transaction is to be carried out via the XXXLutz group’s Mann Mobilia. The cartel office only examined the effects of the involvement with respect to the sales markets. The European Commission in Brussels was responsible for examining the impact on the procurement markets and authorised the deal a few days later.

As the annual sales revenue of the companies involved is in excess of €5bn, the whole transaction should actually have been registered with the European Commission. In view of the fact that the alliance will mainly affect Germany, XXXLutz and Tessner applied for the procedure to be transferred to the Federal Cartel Office. As the procurement markets extend beyond the borders of Germany, however, the European Commission referred the plans to the German cartel authority on 23 January for the purposes of merger control only with respect to the concerned sales markets (relationship furniture trade/retail customer).