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Bonn (dpa) - Germany's largest book retail chain Thalia can continue on its growth path.
The Federal Cartel Office gave the market leader the green light on Wednesday to take over the specialist information retailer Lehmanns.
The competition watchdogs do not expect the takeover to significantly impede competition, as they announced on Wednesday.
Lehmanns mainly acts as a specialist information retailer for professional customers such as universities, libraries and companies and also operates 15 specialist bookshops in German university towns.
With more than 380 branches, Thalia is by far the largest book retail chain in Germany.
The head of the Cartel Office, Andreas Mundt, emphasized: "The increasing digitization, the increasing importance of direct sales by large publishers and the shift to OpenAccess publications are leading to fundamental market changes in the specialist information trade."
In the course of the proceedings, various market participants had emphasized that, in view of these changes, a certain company size was necessary in order to be able to survive on the market over the long term.
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In the book retail sector, the sales of the Lehmanns specialist bookshops are comparatively low anyway.
End customers could switch to other stationary bookstores or online retailers at any time.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210414-99-199033 / 2