The world's biggest corporate merger - the tie-up between internet company America Online and media group Time Warner - is today expected to be approved by the European commission after months of wrangling.
Mario Monti, the competition comissioner, is expected to say the £87bn deal can go ahead after extracting concessions designed to ensure that the new company's rivals will not be unfairly disadvantaged.
Last week's collapse of the related £14bn tie-up between EMI Music and Warner Music in the face of stiff regulatory opposition from Brussels removed the commission's fears that AOL-Time Warner will be able to monopolise the market for entertainment delivery over the net.
The deal still faces regulatory hurdles in the US. The federal trade commission has said it may scupper the merger unless it is assured that Time Warner will allow rivals to lease some of its cable lines which run into people's homes. That the companies have been willing to compromise with European regulators suggests that they will also be ready to allay Washington's concerns.
To win Mr Monti's blessing, AOL, already the world's largest internet company, has reportedly agreed to sever links with Bertelsmann, the German media groupwhich owns 50% of AOL Europe.
Such a concession would effectively prevent any potential for collusion between Warner Music and Bertlesmann's BMG, one of the world's top five record labels.
A similar restructuring of AOL's French unit, which it runs with Vivendi, is on the cards and AOL has reportedly agreed not to force content providers in the US to sign exclusive carriage deals with AOL Europe.
Time Warner, for its part, has said it will not discriminate against non-AOL internet service providers who want to distribute its music online for a period of five years.
The commission's decision to clear the deal will go some way to defuse American suspicions that European regulators are deliberately seeking to hold up internet-related mergers to give their own companies time to catch up.
Such a charge was levelled at Brussels when it decided to block the telecoms tie-up between MCI/Worldcom and Sprint earlier this year, stating that it feared the merged entity would dominate the internet's backbone. That ruling is now under appeal.
The EC is expected to clear a similar deal on Friday - Vivendi's £20bn takeover of Canada's Seagram which owns Universal Music and pay-TV station Canal-Plus.
This deal raised similar concerns, but Vivendi has now made a series of significant concessions and the acquisition looks likely to be given a green light.
