"We have made the final decision on eBay's bid to buy shares of Gmarket Inc. on condition that they are banned from raising sales commissions for the next three years," the FTC said in a statement.
They were also ordered to limit fees related to ads and other services to below the local inflation rate, it added.
The approval came after eBay, the leading Internet commerce site in the U.S., said on April 16 that it has made a cash tender offer of US$24 a share to buy all outstanding common shares and American depository shares in Gmarket. The value of the purchase price is estimated at some US$1.2 billion.
EBay said that it plans to combine Gmarket with Internet Auction Co., its South Korean unit.
The two account for about 90 per cent of online shopping in South Korea, which has almost as many broadband connections as homes, with more than 15.4 million subscribers for high-speed Internet services.
South Korea is one of the world's more wired companies with a growing number of consumers shopping in cyberspace thanks to well-established high-speed Internet network.
The watchdog said that it gave the green light to the takeover bid based on the belief that the merger would have a limited impact on fair market competition given the dynamism in the online marketplace.
(Yonhap)

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