According to public information, the Slovenian Competition Protection Agency has allegedly been conducting dawn raids in the three biggest Slovenian newspaper publishers, Delo, Dnevnik and Časnik Večer in the past few days, due to suspicion of failure to notify a merger. In September 2019, the Agency apparently received a complaint that the newspapers had subordinated the leading press distributor in Slovenia, the company Izberi d.o.o., by exercising control without notifying the concentration to the Agency.
The company Izberi d.o.o., which generates around EUR 15 million in sales revenues annually, supplies more than 2,450 points of sale with daily newspapers and magazines from Slovenian publishers, and also delivers the press to the addresses of hundreds of thousands of households in Slovenia. The largest owner of the company Izberi is Delo (52%), while Dnevnik and Časnik Večer hold smaller shares (24%).
In case of an undeclared concentration, the Agency may impose a fine in the amount of up to ten percent of the infringer’s annual income. The Agency has had significant recent practice of investigating failure to notify, imposing multi-million-euro fines in several high-profile cases.
