South Africa: Telkom – BCX merger gets conditional approval

A merger deal between telecoms firm Telkom and IT services company Business Connexion Group (BCX) valued at R2.6bn has been approved with conditions.

South Africa’s Competition Commission (CompCom) announced that it recommended to the Competition Tribunal that the merger be approved with conditions.

“These are technical conditions relating to downstream services like your value-added network services, the transfer pricing programme – what must happen to that – the fact that it has to stay on I think for a certain period of time,” Mava Scott, spokesperson for CompCom, told Fin24.

“There are both behavioural conditions that have been imposed and there are also employment conditions. I think that there are about 60 employees that were going to be affected and there are conditions relating to that.”

A document from CompCom on the merger says that no more than 60 jobs should be lost in the next three years – 20 per year.