Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 27, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
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ACM approves DPG's acquisition of RTL Nederland with conditions to maintain news independence and competition in the Dutch market.
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)
The ACM approved RTL Group's sale of its Dutch subsidiary RTL Nederland to DPG Media, imposing conditions to protect the Dutch news market.
The conditions include that RTL Nieuws and NU.nl will be partly owned by an independent foundation, ensuring separate management and editorial independence.
ACM director Martijn Snoep emphasized that the conditions ensure news consumers can choose from different, independent news sources.
The acquisition deal was valued at 1.1 billion euros, equivalent to approximately 1.29 billion dollars.
No, both media organizations will continue as separate brands with independent newsrooms that will not exchange content.
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