IP/09/1741

Brussels, 19 th November 2009

Mergers: Commission approves proposed acquisition of Nortel's Enterprise Solutions business by Avaya

The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation the acquisition of the Enterprise Solutions business of the Canadian company Nortel Network Corporation by Avaya Inc of the US. After examination, the Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.

Avaya is active in unified communications worldwide, and provides communication systems, applications and services for enterprises, including large corporations, small businesses, government agencies and other organisations. Nortel ES provides global enterprise communications products and services to telecommunications carriers and businesses of all sizes.

Avaya and Nortel ES are both active in PBXs and contact centres. A PBX is a telephone exchange system, based on a combination of hardware and integrated software, which connects the internal telephones of a private organisation's network to the public switched telephone network. Contact centres are centralised locations which receive and transmit large volumes of requests by telephone, email, live chat or other forms of communication.

The Commission found that the planned transaction would not raise any competition concerns in the overall market for unified communication solutions nor in the narrower markets for PBXs and contact centres. The Commission's investigation revealed that the markets for PBXs and contact centres are very dynamic and are moving to internet protocol (IP)-based technologies. Post-merger, the combined entity would continue to face a number of strong and effective competitors giving customers the choice from a range of alternative providers for PBXs and contact centres.

More information on the case will be available at:

http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/index/m112.html#m_5607