U.S. telecoms services company Syniverse Technologies is set to win EU antitrust approval for its 550 million-euro ($710 million) takeover of Mach after agreeing to divest a big chunk of its rival's operations, sources said on Friday.
Syniverse, owned by private equity firm the Carlyle Group , unveiled the offer for Luxembourg-based Mach in July last year. The deal will combine the world's No. 1 and 2 players in mobile roaming revenues services.
Both companies collect customers' roaming data which mobile providers use to determine the wholesale payments they make to each other for roaming services.
The European Commission opened an investigation into the case in December last year, worried that the deal could lead to price increases for customers. The combined company would dwarf its nearest competitors in Europe and elsewhere by a big margin.
Syniverse then proposed to sell a big part of Mach's business in Europe, including GSM data clearing and near real-time roaming data exchange businesses, network infrastructure and database servers and the Mach brand.
It will also transfer Mach's supplier contracts and 117 employees to the buyer.
"The Commission will give conditional clearance," said one person familiar with the matter.
The second person said Syniverse would need to find a buyer for the Mach assets, which the competition authority approves of, before it can formally close the deal.
European Commission spokesman for competition policy, Antoine Colombani, declined to comment. The Commission has set a June 20 deadline for its decision.
Mach's customers include France Telecom unit Orange, Spanish telecoms provider Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom unit T-Mobile, U.S. mobile phone operator Verizon Communications' joint venture Verizon Wireless, Microsoft and Dutch airline KLM.