To be fair, Naspers tried to get there first. Back in September 2018, the Tencent-and-others group announced an intention to acquire WeBuyCars (WBC). The Competition Commission was having none of it, recommending that the deal be prohibited, before the Competition Tribunal came to the same conclusion in March 2020.

Among the reasons for the prohibition was that the regulator wasn’t happy about the prospect of WBC falling into the same corporate group as AutoTrader and OLX. Though I’ve been highly critical of the recent approach to the Burger King SA deal by the regulators, I think they got it spot-on with Naspers and WBC. WBC has so much inventory that it could be considered a competitor to AutoTrader...

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