South Africa: Blue Label Telecom,/Hyve Mobile deal approved

The Competition Commission of South Africa has approved, without conditions, the proposed merger whereby Blue Label Telecoms (BLT) intends to acquire Hyve Mobile.

In South Africa, BLT, through its various subsidiaries, produces and distributes a wide variety of secure electronic tokens of value and transactional services. The BLT Group’s product and service offerings include prepaid and post-paid airtime, prepaid electricity, bill payments, electronic funds transfer, gift vouchers, loyalty programs, stored value cards, location based services, and other tokens of value (both physical and virtual) that are allied to the telecoms, utilities, insurance, financial services, and transport industries.

Hyve Mobile offers content and services to which audiences can subscribe. These services include games wireless application protocol (WAP) portals and football WAP portals, but also news and other content messages delivered via short message service and/ or unstructured supplementary service data.

The Commission found that the proposed transaction is unlikely to result in a substantial prevention or lessening of competition in any market. The Commission further found that the proposed transaction does not raise any public interest concerns.