Google/Begun comedy-drama, Part 2

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) from the Russian Federation has finally put its foot down on the Google-Begun deal as anticipated in our previous article.

According to the press release (for the moment available only in Russian) on the official site of the FAS, they have received a request from a privately-owned limited liability company KOKUNA HOLDINGS LIMITED to buy out 100% of Begun’s voting shares.

Having examined the documents that were presented on October 22, the FAS governed by clause 5 of part 2 of article 33 of the federal law “On Protection of Competition” has decided to decline the petition. This clause allows the FAS to refuse to satisfy petitions in case the deal leads to “restriction of competition including such as in the result of emerging or strengthening of the dominant position of the applicant…and if in the process of examination of the submitted documents the anti monopoly authority finds that the information contained in the documents and significant for the decision-making is unreliable.”

As a reminder, back in July 18th, Google had signed an agreement with Rambler Media to purchase Begun for USD 140 million, agreement which was due to be completed in Q3 of 2008 and was supposed to go through the normal procedures on registration and approval by the regulatory authorities.

To conclude, I have to say I deeply regret not having made a bet with my optimistic colleagues with regards to the final verdict…I knew this deal wouldn’t go through. It could have been an easy win compared to playing the Superenalotto!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Media News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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