Vodafone CEO says EU could learn from Britain's merger control

By Paul Sandle

LONDON (Reuters) - Vodafone's CEO said on Tuesday that the European Commission could learn lessons from Britain when it came to assessing in-market consolidation in the telecoms sector.

The company's $19 billion merger with Hutchison's Three in Britain was approved by the country's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in December after it said their network investment plan would benefit consumers in the long term.

Margherita Della Valle said she had discussed the CMA's approach in a recent meeting with the European Commissioner for Competition Teresa Ribera and other telecoms leaders.

Della Valle said there were two simple changes that could be implemented in Europe to boost a sector that had struggled to deliver returns for investors for years.

One was broadening the horizon of assessment, she said.

"The guidelines in Europe are talking about assessing these mergers on an 18-month-to-three-year timeline," she told reporters after Vodafone updated on trading.

"We are a technology industry: we should look at it on a broader horizon, as the CMA has done."

The other change should be looking beyond the number of mobile network operators in a market to also consider the wholesale market, including mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that piggy-back on existing networks.

The European Commission and the CMA had both long opposed in principle mergers that reduced the number of operators in major markets from four to three.

However, the strength of competition from MVNOs such as Tesco Mobile and Sky Mobile was a factor in approving the four-to-three network operator deal in Britain.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Alexander Smith)