EU opens subsidy probe into JD.com’s $2.5 billion Ceconomy bid

The European Commission has put JD.com’s bid for Ceconomy under a full-scale subsidy probe, warning that foreign support may have helped the Chinese retailer compete for one of Europe’s largest consumer-electronics groups. The move is the Commission’s first in-depth investigation of a Chinese deal under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, a sign that Brussels is now testing how far it will go in policing capital from outside the bloc.

At issue is JD.com’s voluntary public takeover offer for all Ceconomy shares, launched on 30 July 2025 through JINGDONG Holding Germany GmbH. The offer price of €4.60 a share valued the German retailer at roughly €2.2 billion to €2.5 billion and carried a premium of about 23% to Ceconomy’s share price before takeover speculation began. Ceconomy’s MediaMarkt and Saturn chains operate more than 1,000 stores across 11 European countries, employ about 50,000 people and generate annual revenue of roughly €23 billion.

Regulators said preliminary findings suggest JD.com may have benefited from foreign subsidies in the form of preferential financing, tax incentives and grants linked to entities possibly connected to the People’s Republic of China. The Commission is also examining whether those advantages allowed JD.com to bid higher for Ceconomy and then back the retailer’s expansion with its own technology and logistics network. JD.com has rejected that view, saying the acquisition will not be financed by Chinese or other non-EU subsidies and will instead rely on private bank debt and ordinary-course cash resources.

The case matters because it shows how the EU’s new anti-subsidy framework is moving from theory to dealmaking. The Foreign Subsidies Regulation entered into force on 12 January 2023, applied from 12 July 2023 and began requiring notification for qualifying mergers and acquisitions on 12 October 2023. Brussels has already used the tool in other high-profile matters, including probes into Chinese train-maker CRRC and ADNOC’s bid for Covestro, but the JD.com-Ceconomy review extends that logic into European retail, where control of stores, platforms and data can shape competition just as much as price.

The Commission set an October 2 deadline for its decision, leaving several months in which the buyer may need to offer concessions or alter the structure of the deal. For JD.com, the probe adds legal and political friction to a long-planned push beyond China. For Ceconomy, it injects fresh uncertainty into a transaction that could redraw ownership at a major European consumer-electronics seller and set a precedent for how Brussels handles future Chinese acquisitions in sensitive sectors.