Green light of the Antitrust to the income of shipowning group MSC in the capital of the Messina company



The Guarantor Authority of the Competition and Market (AGCM) has authorized the operation with which the shipowning group Helvetic Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), through the controlled Marinvest, it will in December acquire 49% of the capital of the shipowning company genoese Ignazio Messina & C. and 52% of the Ro-Ro Italy, society constituted 2018 from the genoese company which special purpose vehicle for the concentration operation(on 14 June 2019).

Such operation will be put into effect in three phases: the bestowal in Ignazio Messina by the shipowning group Messina of the totality of its activities, included the terminalistica activity there that comprises the terminal for containers, several rotabili and goods Intermodal Marine Terminal (IMT) of the port of Genoa, the subscription by Marinvest of a vital increase of classified, to the outcome of which this last one will succeed in to stop 49% of the actions of Ignazio Messina and the combined control of this society with the Messina group, and at last the subscription by Marinvest and of the Messina group of an increase of capital of the society Ro-Ro Italy, in outcome to which the two societies will stop, respective, one participation of 52% and 48% of the share capital of Ro-Ro Italy, that they will confer the combined control of the society. Successively Ro-Ro Italy will acquire by Ignazio Messina four ships let alone the naval loans connected to their purchase.

In its appraisals the Authority Antitrust has specified that relatively to the important markets of the services of marine transport of container "the concentration operation does not appear to raise competitive criticalities" and that, "for that it concerns the services of handling of goods in container in "the terminal" ports comprised in the basin of user of the port of Genoa, verification an overlap to horizontal level - completely marginal - between the activities of the parts limitedly to the case in which an area of the port of Genoa is considered catchment that includes also the port of Livorno".

Moreover the estimated AGCM that "under the profile of the vertical integration between the services carried out from IMT and the activities of the parts in the field of the marine transport of goods on bundles of routes da/verso the Mediterranean, the limited character of the stopped market shares from the Messina Group is not such to raise worries of competitive nature tied to potential effects of exclusion from the market or discrimination to the damages of active operators in the row". The authority therefore has concluded that "the concentration operation does not appear to alter in substantial way the level of the competition in the considered important markets".