The Philippine Competition Commission approved the acquisition of two Philippines-based call center and back office companies by one of the largest business process outsourcing groups in Japan.
“In view of the recommendation from the mergers and acquisitions office that, on the basis of information obtained from the parties and third parties, the acquisition by Relia Inc. of shares in SPi CRM Inc. and Infocom Technologies Inc. does not result in a substantial lessening of competition in the relevant market,” PCC said in its decision.
PCC said Relia was not conducting any business in the Philippines and the BPO businesses of the parties were catering to different geographic markets.
“In any event, there remain alternative suppliers of business process outsourcing services in the Philippines that impose competitive constraints on the acquiring party post-acquisition,” PCC said.
Relia earlier acquired 100 percent of the shares of SPi and 99.64 percent of the shares of Infocom. SPi Technologies Inc. owns 99.6 percent of Infocom.
The Japanese BPO firm said the transaction was executed as a part of its strategy to further provide English/Tagalog language services for its global client customers by acquiring business operation sites in the Philippines where the off-shore call center and BPO industry continued to expand.
Relia said it intended to accelerate its business expansion in the Asian region where further economic growth was expected, by adding the Philippines to Thailand and Vietnam, where it was providing services for years.