In September 2019, popular carpooling service BlaBlaCar announced its intention to purchase Russia’s largest online bus ticket aggregator Busfor. The Firm’s Competition Practice team managed to obtain clearance for this landmark deal from the FAS Russia by proving that it would not limit competition on the market for online bus ticket sales.
EPAM’s team successfully demonstrated that the merger would have a favorable social and economic effect, and that the synergy of the Busfor’s GDS service (an innovative system of tickets distribution, reservation and booking) and BlaBlaCar’s consumers (over 20 million users in Russia) would facilitate the growth and digitalization of the Russian market for bus tickets, which still lags behind the Russian air and railway ticket markets.
The Firm’s Competition Practice team working on the project were led by Partner Anna Numerova, and included Senior Associate Ksenia Firsova and Associates Karin Ovakimyan and Alexander Silakov.
