2024-09-17 17:34:34
The Federal Cartel Office has no objections: The bookseller Thalia is allowed to take over parts of the insolvent Weltbild Group – also thanks to the billion-dollar company Amazon.
Following the insolvency of the Weltbild Group, the Federal Cartel Office has granted the bookseller Thalia permission to take over parts of the group. As the Cartel Office announced in Bonn on Monday, the Thalia Group will take over the customer relationships from the Weltbild online shop and the Tolino brand e-readers sold by Weltbild, as well as the Weltbild brands and domains. The retail stores that were already closed as a result of the company’s insolvency will not be taken over.
The Thalia Group is by far the largest stationary book retailer in Germany. Thalia has “a significant market position in the book trade and is also a relevant force in e-books via the Tolino platform,” explained Federal Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt. “That’s why we took a close look at the acquisition of Weltbild’s customer data and brands.”
Ultimately, however, the merger was approved in the first phase. “In addition to the fact that Weltbild’s stores were not part of the merger, one of the decisive factors for approval was that Amazon is a much larger competitor in both the online trade in printed books and in the e-book sector,” explained Mundt.
Even when considering the overall market for stationary and online sales of books, customers have sufficient alternatives available to them with independent booksellers, other bookstore chains such as Hugendubel and online retailers, the President of the Federal Cartel Office continued.
The core company of the Weltbild Group filed for bankruptcy again in June, after having already slipped into insolvency once in 2014. After the bankruptcy of the parent company, Weltbild subsidiaries such as the book mail order companies Bücher.de and Jokers and the online shop Tausendkind also filed for bankruptcy in July.