Thales and Gemalto have attained another clearance for their proposed merger, this time from the New Zealand Commerce Commission.
The approval comes hot on the heels of one from the European Commission announced earlier this week. As in that case, Thales and Gemalto noted in a statement that the clearance has arrived “following Thales’s commitment to divest its general purpose hardware security modules (GP HSM) business globally”.
This was a central concern of the European Commission, which announced an investigation into the merger this summer over antitrust concerns, since Thales and Gemalto are two of the biggest sellers of HSMs in the European Union. Presumably, this was a similar concern with respect to the New Zealand market.
In announcing this latest clearance, Thales and Gemalto noted that they now have nine of the 14 regulatory approvals needed for Thales’ acquisition of Gemalto to proceed. The companies expect to have obtained all of the needed clearances in the first quarter of 2019, with the deal to close almost immediately thereafter.
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