Seoul’s regulator approves merger between Japan’s steel giants

Korea's corporate regulator said Thursday it has approved a merger between Nippon Steel Corp. and Sumitomo Metal Industries, saying the consolidation of the two Japanese steelmaking giants will not restrain market competition here.

Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Industries, Japan's No. 1 and No. 3 players, agreed in February last year to merge in a deal that would create the world's second-largest steel maker. They submitted their merger bid to the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) last October.

The FTC said it has focused its deliberation on 10 products supplied by the Japanese companies to the domestic market because they are major items that compete with those produced by Korean steelmakers.

"We determined that the merger would not restrain market competition in each of the items checked," the FTC said in a press release, citing the Japanese firms' relatively small market shares here and the fact there are "strong" local competitors such as POSCO.

The regulator said it will continue to carefully deliberate on business consolidation deals among major foreign companies to see if they might affect domestic market competition and eventually hurt consumer rights. (Yonhap)