EU Stock Market Merger On Ice: EU set to block stock market mega merger

 London Stock Exchange (LSE) said its proposed merger with Deutsche Börse AG was unlikely to be approved by the European Commission, leaving the stock market operators’ third attempt at combining on the brink of failure.

The LSE said in a statement late on Sunday (26 February) that the Commission had asked it to sell its 60% stake in fixed-income trading platform MTS to satisfy antitrust concerns over the merger of Europe’s two largest market operators.

Calling the request “disproportionate”, the British exchange said it believed that it would struggle to sell MTS and that such a sale would be detrimental to its ongoing business.

“Based on the Commission’s current position, LSE believes that the Commission is unlikely to provide clearance for the merger,” it said.

The exchange added that it would still work to make the merger with Deutsche Börse succeed, but that would be impossible unless the executive changed its position.

Read more: EU set to block stock market mega merger – EurActiv.com

Mergers an anti-dote for competitive pricing - Consumers wary of Comcast, Time Warner Cable merger

Consumer advocates, industry analysts and cable customers wasted little time Thursday in airing concerns about the blockbuster deal to combine Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the nation's two largest cable companies.

The $45 billion deal, if approved by federal regulators, would result in a total customer base of 30 million subscribers and could bring technological advances to the world of cable TV and high-speed internet.

But the proposed merger comes at a time when customer satisfaction with the cable TV industry — and the two companies in particular — is low. Last year, Comcast and Time Warner Cable came in dead last in an industry consumer satisfaction survey performed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Time Warner Cable has had numerous customer service and operational issues that have hampered its reputation, exacerbated last year by its high-profile fight with and decision to drop CBS over retransmission fees. This ire was seen across social-media sites such as Twitter and Facebook Thursday, as users voiced concern about the megamerger.

The merger would give Comcast the leverage to demand higher fees from programmers, such as HBO and AMC, and would also likely result in higher fees for consumers, he said. The new megacompany could more readily drop smaller programmers, such as IFC, who don't agree to new payment schemes, leading to fewer channel choices for viewers.

Note EU-Digest: as we have seen with the airline industry mergers these mega-mergers do not lead to competitive pricing but rather to increased pricing and bad customer service

Read more: Consumers wary of Comcast, Time Warner Cable merger