By Agency reporter

Thursday, 18 Nov 2010

Brussels: Unilever won European Union approval to buy Sara Lee Corporation‘s shower-gel and European detergents business after it agreed to sell off the Sanex deodorant and body-wash brand in the region.

According to Bloomberg, the sale of the Sara Lee unit allays competition concerns over the ¤1.3bn ($1.76bn) deal, the European Commission said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday.

”We had to ensure that the transaction would not lead to increased prices for consumers,” EU Competition Commissioner, Mr. Joaquin Almunia said. ”As Unilever offered a strong and clear- cut remedy to address the competition concerns in a number of deodorant markets, the commission was able to clear the merger.”

Unilever, the world‘s second-largest consumer-goods maker, sought to buy the competing Sara Lee lines to further focus on international brands. Combining the Sanex brand with Unilever‘s Dove and Rexona would ”likely have led to price increases” in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain and Portugal by removing the company‘s main rival, the European Commission, the 27-nation EU‘s antitrust agency, said.

The Sara Lee brands had sales of more than ¤750m for the 12 months ending June 2009, according to Unilever.

EU approval allows Unilever to add important brands to the ”key growth category” of home and personal care, the company‘s president for western Europe Doug Baillie, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Source: Punch