Inquiry stalls microscopy merger

12 Feb 2004

The UK’s Competition Commission is scrutinizing Carl Zeiss’ planned acquisition of Bio-Rad’s microscopy arm.

Carl Zeiss’ plans to buy the microscopy business of Bio-Rad Laboratories, UK, are being investigated by the UK’s Competition Commission (CC). The CC inquiry will evaluate whether their merger would cause a significant reduction in competition in the UK and worldwide.

“Carl Zeiss and Bio-Rad are two of the three principal suppliers of single and multi-photon microscopes in the UK and worldwide,” explained Vincent Smith, who is director of competition enforcement at the UK’s Office of Fair Trading, which referred the proposed acquisition to the CC. “Concerns arise from the reduction in head-to-head competition and the effect on the incentives of the remaining players to innovate”.

As part of its investigation, the CC wants to explore the 3D light microscopy markets in depth such as optical and non-optical sectioning systems, and confocal and multi-photon systems. It is investigating whether these markets should be defined as national, regional or worldwide and or segmented by target application, such as biology or materials science.

Once the markets have been defined the CC will assess the overlap between the microscopy activities of Carl Zeiss and Bio-Rad. It wants to establish what effect a merger would potentially have on the price of products and customer choice. It also wants to see if there are barriers that might prevent new players entering this market as well as the likely effect on suppliers of microscope stands, lasers or hardware and software. In addition the possibility of microscopy R&D activities being moved away from the UK will be considered.

The full issues statement can be found at the CC’s website. Anybody with comments about the issues raised should contact the inquiry secretary, Mary Peretz by Wednesday 25 February.

The CC will publish its report on the proposed merger by 14 June 2004.

Author
Siân Harris is features editor of Opto & Laser Europe magazine.