Deadline passes on Universal deal.

The deadline for "observations" about Universal's proposed deal to buy BMG Music Publishing passed last Friday following sustained petitioning from the anti-merger lobby.

The competition commissioner and director general responsible for mergers, Neelie Kroes and Philip Lowe respectively, ordered the team responsible for investigating Universal's bid to become the world's largest publishing group to personally meet with some of the deal's most vociferous opponents.

And, over the past couple of weeks, a number of these groups including European indie group Impala, The British Academy of Composers and Songwriters (Bacs) and the Swedish Society of Popular Music Composers (SKAP) were invited to personally meet with the case team to press their concerns.

Significantly, the EC merger task force had also sent out numerous questionnaires to quiz composers, authors, publishers and collecting societies at grass-roots level for their reaction to Universal's plans. According to one insider, this represents a "major paradigm shift".

Key Impala personnel, including the group's president and Naove president Patrick Zelnick and board member and Play It Again Sam co- chairman Michel Lambot, met with the EC merger case team last Monday. They pressed concerns ranging from the impact on ...