The German cartel authorities on Monday gave the go-ahead to a planned tie-up between the French and German tank makers, Nexter and KMW (Krauss-Maffei Wegmann.

The Federal Cartel Office said in a statement that it had approved plans by the two companies to pool their activities into a 50-50 joint venture.

"The object of our investigation was to ascertain whether effective competition on the two markets concerned would be substantially disrupted. This is not to be expected," said cartel office chief Andreas Mundt.

Nexter, which makes Leclerc tanks, and KMW, maker of Leopard vehicles, plan to pool their actitivies into a joint venture with combined sales of around two billion euros ($2.3 billion) and a workforce of 6,000.

The new unit would rank behind US giant General Dynamics, British group BAE Systems and Oshkosh Defense, also of the United States, in terms of sales.

The cartel office said the economy ministry would examine the defence policy consequences of the tie-up.