EU General Court Upholds EC Block on Booking's ETraveli Takeover
The General Court upheld the Commission's prohibition of Booking Holdings' acquisition of ETraveli, a first-instance loss on a travel-OTA merger that signals the Commission's appetite to litigate contested deals.
The EU General Court has upheld the European Commission's decision prohibiting Booking Holdings' acquisition of the ETraveli Group, according to a Fried Frank client alert on JD Supra. The ruling matters well beyond travel: it is a first-instance judicial endorsement of a Commission prohibition decision, and it arrives in a fact pattern — a global online travel agency acquiring a closely adjacent flight-content and technology supplier — that mirrors the vertical and platform consolidation now shaping deal pipelines across digital sectors.
Antitrust and M&A counsel will want to examine the judgment for how the General Court handled the Commission's economic theory, the contested market definitions, and any reliance on remedies discussions in Commission communications. The decision is appealable to the Court of Justice of the EU on points of law, so any appeal timetable and the parties' statements on next steps are the concrete developments to watch. For clients running parallel multi-jurisdiction filings, the case is a data point on divergence risk and on the trade-off between litigating a prohibition and withdrawing to re-notify with commitments. Details of any underlying remedy package are not set out in the single available source and are treated here as unconfirmed.