Green light from the cartel office: Rewe is allowed to take over seven more Tegut branches
The competition authority approves Rewe's acquisition of seven additional locations from the Tegut supermarket chain.
Quick Look
- The Federal Cartel Office has approved Rewe to take over seven additional Tegut branches.
- There are no competition concerns.
- Rewe was previously allowed to take over 38 locations, while Edeka was awarded 178 branches.
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Why It Matters
Tegut has been part of Migros Zurich since 2019 and has been for sale since March 2024. The large retailers Edeka and Rewe share over 90 percent of the market with Aldi and the Schwarz Group.
After Tegut's exit, competitors are interested in a number of former branches. The cartel office examines the requests and grants them subject to conditions. At Rewe there is now reason to be happy. The company is allowed to take over more branches than previously permitted.
The Federal Cartel Office has allowed Rewe to take over seven additional Tegut branches. There are “no competition concerns,” explained head of the authority Andreas Mundt. No problematic concentration is to be expected in the affected local sales markets, and Rewe's position on the procurement markets will hardly change.
The Federal Cartel Office had already approved Rewe to take over 38 Tegut stores in October. In return, the supermarket chain had to undertake not to acquire two additional Tegut locations in the Hesse cities of Marburg and Schlüchtern for four years. The now approved takeover of up to seven additional Tegut stores does not affect these two branches, but rather locations in and near Würzburg.
At the end of September, the Federal Cartel Office had already allowed Edeka to take over 178 Tegut branches and other parts of the company after a thorough examination. Edeka also had to undertake not to acquire certain locations initially: According to the cartel office, this involved a further 24 Tegut locations for a period of four years.
The Monopolies Commission then warned of the possible consequences for competition. “The authorities will now have to pay even more attention to ensuring that the big four do not drive up prices or prevent innovation,” explained the head of the commission, Tomaso Duso, with a view to the four major retailers Edeka, Rewe, Aldi and the Schwarz Group with Lidl and Kaufland. According to the Federal Cartel Office, the four companies already account for more than 90 percent of food retail sales.
Tegut, with a total of around 300 branches in Hesse, Thuringia and Bavaria as well as in Göttingen, Stuttgart and Mainz, has been part of the Migros Zurich cooperative since 2019. They announced in March that they wanted to sell Tegut completely. In June, the cartel office also approved the takeover of 36 branches in Hesse, Thuringia and northern Bavaria by the Bremen-based food retailer Tante Enso.
Open Questions
- Which other locations will be taken over by other competitors?
