NEW YORK—The planned 5 January completion of the merger between SK Telecom and SK Shinsegi Telecom, which together control 52 percent of South Korea’s mobile-phone customers, hit a roadblock at the 11th hour.
At its 29 December meeting to review the transaction, the policy committee of the Federal Information and Communications Ministry said its members need additional time to evaluate the market impact. The committee expects to meet again sometime in January, the Korea Herald reported.
The Fair Trade Commission, South Korea’s antitrust agency, approved SK Telecom’s acquisition of a 51-percent stake in Shinsegi in April 2000, provided the two carriers reduced their collective market share to below 50 percent by the end of June 2000. By August 2001, SK Telecom owned 66.2 percent of Shinsegi.
KTF, the wireless unit of state-run Korea Telecom, and LG Telecom, the smallest mobile operator in the country, have lobbied federal officials to block the merger or at least to impose restrictions for maintaining competition in the country’s wireless market.
In addition, 1,000 minority shareholders of SK Shinsegi have filed a lawsuit in Seoul District Court, alleging the merger process was not implemented in a fair and transparent manner, the Korea Times reported.
