CCI approves Everstone's acquisition of Aon's payroll biz

Competition Commission has given the green signal to Mauritius-based investment firm Everstone Capital Partners' proposed acquisition of US-based Aon Corp's payroll business in the Asia Pacific region.
According to the fair trade regulator, the proposed deal does not raise anti-competition concerns in the country.
The deal involves acquisition of Asia Pacific based payroll business of Aon which carried on through its indirect subsidiaries in India, China, Philippines and Singapore, by Everstone Capital Partners' -- part of global private equity group Everstone.
In India, the deal relates to purchase of the payroll business of Aon Services India, an indirect subsidiary of Aon, as a going concern, by Everstone through its arm Payfront Technologies India.

In an order released today, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said that "the proposed combination is not likely to have appreciable adverse effect on competition in India".
Noting that Everstone does not directly undertake any business activities, CCI said that Indian arm of the investment firm Aparajitha Corporate Services is engaged in payroll services business in India.

"However, on the basis of the nature of services provided by Aparajitha and the scale of operations of Aparajitha, the Commission observed that the horizontal overlap arising in this regard is insignificant and is not likely to raise any competition concern," CCI added.

Aon is a global provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human resources solutions and outsourcing services.
As per the order, the payroll business under the deal entails the transfer of operational responsibility for payroll services from the client to an independent third party service provider such as Aon India and includes the transfer of payroll administration, data validation, payroll processing, tax filing and reporting and payroll data entry.
The two parties had entered into an Share and Assets Sale and Purchase Agreement on December 4, 2014 following which they had filed for an approval from CCI in January.