A merger in the middle of the Indian unit of Japanese Sony and India’s Zee Entertainment to generate a $10 billion enterprise is likely to happen; potentially, this emergence would hurt competition by having “Unparalleled bargaining power. “An antitrust watchdog of the country found in an initial review, States the Official notice reviewed by Reuters.
In the morning trade on Thursday, Shares of zee fell nearly 5 per cent following the Reuters report.

Both Companies, In December, approved to merge their television channels, film assets, and streaming platforms to build a powerhouse in the Media and growing market of 1.4 billion viewers, competing against big channels like Walt Disney. The CCIs would delay regulatory approval for the deal and could compel the companies to change their structures; Three Indian Lawyers stated that if the merging fails to satisfy the CCI, then CCI may prolong approval and investigation.

Zee assures that the company will continue to take all the necessary legal steps to complete the proposed merger’s approval processes. The Representatives of Sony in Japan and CCI, along with Sony India, did not respond to the request yet,

In its 21-page notice, CCI states that the suggested deal would place the combined entity in a strong position with around 92 channels in India. The merged entity has 45 per cent of the Hindi language segments, which would draw the attention of most of the country’s Audience, with Star a “distant second”. The preliminary CCI competition assessment also showed.