Dutch watchdog clears DPG's acquisition of RTL Nederland

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Dutch competition watchdog ACM said on Friday it had cleared RTL Group's sale of its Dutch subsidiary RTL Nederland to Belgium-based DPG Media, under conditions meant to protect the independence of involved news media.

RTL announced the 1.1 billion euro ($1.29 billion) deal in December 2023, nearly a year after its plan to acquire rival Talpa was blocked, over competition concerns.

ACM said it had attached structural conditions to the DPG deal to protect the Dutch news market, where DPG and RTL are major competitors.

DPG publishes four major Dutch newspapers and owns one of the country's main free news websites, NU.nl. RTL Nederland is a major news broadcaster through its television channels, website and app.

As part of the conditions, RTL Nieuws and Nu.nl will be partly owned by an independent foundation that can decide over the hiring and firing of the editor-in-chief, the media's identity and mission and will have a veto over any possible future sale.

Both media organisations will continue as separate brands with freely accessible websites, created by separate, independent newsrooms that will not exchange any content, ACM said.

These conditions will remain in place also in the case of a future sale of DPG or parts of it.

"News consumers must continue to be able to choose from different, independent news sources," ACM director Martijn Snoep said. "With these conditions, we have safeguarded that."

RTL Nederland and DPG were not immediately available for comment.

($1 = 0.8546 euros)

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Bart Meijer; Editing by Joe Bavier and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)