The European Commission cleared the proposed purchase of Virgin...

cable operator, it said. The merger investigation confirmed that the acquisition won’t raise competition concerns, particularly because the parties run cable networks in different EU countries and because of the combined entity’s limited market position in the wholesale of TV channels in Britain and Ireland, it said. Both companies acquire visual content such as TV programs and entire TV channels, which they then offer to subscribers, it said. The inquiry found that the deal won’t hurt competition in those markets, because TV content is mainly licensed on a national basis or for linguistically homogeneous areas, and because there will still be competition from other players such as TV content providers and competing pay-TV retailers, it said. The probe also looked at the vertical link between Liberty Global’s activities in the wholesale supply of pay-TV channels such as CBS Reality, and Virgin Media’s activities in the acquisition of those channels and pay-TV retail services to U.K. customers. It concluded that the combined company is unlikely to shut out rival pay-TV retailers by withholding TV channels from them because of its limited presence in the wholesale supply of TV channels and the incentive to license its channels as broadly as possible. It’s also not likely that the new company will keep out competing TV channel owners from access to the retail pay-TV markets given the number of alternative distribution platforms to Virgin Media’s cable network, such as BSkyB’s satellite platform, the EC said.