Merger of Advania Holding hf. and Wise lausnir ehf.

The Icelandic Competition Authority (ICA) has had a merger between the undertakings Advania hf. (“Advania”) and Wise holding ehf. (“Wise”) under investigation. Advania specialises in a broad range of IT services and is one of the largest companies that provides Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software in Iceland. Wise is an IT service company that specialises in developing, selling and servicing the ERP software Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

Preliminary findings indicated that the combined market share of the merged company in the market for development, sale and service of ERP software in Iceland would exceed 50% post-merger. In addition, the investigation implied that the parties were close competitors. Therefore, ICA issued a Statement of Objections (SO) on June 4 that according to its preliminary findings, there was a need to intervene in the merger. Today, on June 18, the parties have formally withdrawn their merger notification. With that, ICA’s investigation into the merger has concluded.