The European Commission has approved the cashless merger between Holtzbrinck’s Macmillan Science and Education and Springer Science+Business Media, which was first announced back in January. After reviewing the joint venture proposal, the EC found that the two companies “overlap mainly in the market for the provision of academic publishing and, marginally, in the markets for scientific online databases and workflow tools, marketing and communication as well as publishing related services.” The Commission “concluded that the proposed acquisition would not raise competition concerns given the parties’ moderate combined market positions resulting from the proposed transaction and the presence of a number of strong players […]