The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has granted conditional approval to the proposal for the merger of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd and Sony Pictures Network India on Tuesday.

The anti trust watchdog imposed conditions to prevent Zee Sony from misusing its dominating market position. 

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“Commission approves amalgamation of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEE) and Bangla Entertainment Private Limited (BEPL) with Culver Max Entertainment Private Limited (CME), with certain modifications,” CCI said in a tweet.

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) approved the proposed merger on July 29.

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On September 22, 2021, Sony and Zee announced that they will integrate their television stations, film assets, and streaming platforms to build a media and entertainment powerhouse with a large base of 1.4 billion viewers. Once completed, it will be one of the biggest mergers in India’s television media industry.

After a 90-days period to conduct due diligence for the process which ended on December 21, the Board of Directors of Zee approved the proposal.

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The Board then announced that while Sony will hold a 50.85% stake in the combined company, promoters of Zee will hold 3.99%, and other Zee shareholders will hold a 45.15% stake in the merged entity.

According to the definitive agreements, Sony will have a cash balance of $1.5 billion to enable the merged entity to drive sharper content creation across platforms, strengthen its footprint in the rapidly evolving digital ecosystem, place a bid for media rights in the fast-growing sports landscape and pursue other growth opportunities, Zee had said at the time of Board’s approval for the merger.

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The approval from CCI comes over a month after it was reported that the fair trade regulator has flagged the potential adverse effects arising from the Zee-Sony merger. The merger which would create a $10 billion TV enterprise will potentially hurt competition by having “unparalleled bargaining power”, Reuters reported on August 31, citing an official CCI note that it had seen.

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According to experts, the merger is important as the coming together of Zee and Sony will bring tremendous synergies between the two companies that will exponentially grow the business and the sector.