Watchdog 'conditionally' OKs eBay's bid for Gmarket

SEOUL, April 23 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's antitrust watchdog said Thursday that
it has granted "conditional" approval for a bid by eBay Inc. to take over Gmarket
Inc., the nation's biggest online marketplace.
"We have made the final decision on eBay's bid to buy shares of Gmarket Inc. on
condition that they are banned from raising sales commissions for the next three
years," the FTC said in a statement.
They were also ordered to limit fees related to ads and other services to below
the local inflation rate, it added.
The approval came after eBay, the leading Internet commerce site in the U.S.,
said on April 16 that it has made a cash tender offer of US$24 a share to buy all
outstanding common shares and American depository shares in Gmarket. The value of
the purchase price is estimated at some $1.2 billion.
EBay said that it plans to combine Gmarket with Internet Auction Co., its South
Korean unit.
The two account for about 90 percent of online shopping in South Korea, which has
almost as many broadband connections as homes, with more than 15.4 million
subscribers for high-speed Internet services.
South Korea is one of the world's more wired companies with a growing number of
consumers shopping in cyberspace thanks to well-established high-speed Internet
network.
The watchdog said that it gave the green light to the takeover bid based on the
belief that the merger would have a limited impact on fair market competition
given the dynamism in the online marketplace.
kokobj@yna.co.kr
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