AOL SAYS MERGER ON TRACK
The European Commission's regulators have circulated a preliminary proposal to block AOL's proposed merger with TW (hitsdailydouble.com, 9/18).
"This is a normal part of the process with the EU," Ken Lerer, Senior VP, AOL, told the Wall Street Journal. "As we have said, we are on track to close in the fall."
The EC is against the AOL-TW merger partly because of concerns over Time Warner's plans to merge its music unit with EMI. The EMI joint venture, announced after the AOL-TW deal, also faces antitrust objections from the Federal Trade Commission in Washington.
Both agencies are concerned about allowing the creation of a $20 billion music powerhouse that would be the biggest music publisher and one of the two biggest recorded-music companies in the world with potential to dominate online music distribution, through the AOL deal. Regulators think the deals could stifle fair competition.
"We are totally comfortable with where we are at this stage of the negotiations and have made excellent progress and are confident the talks will conclude successfully," Lerer said.
