I'm sure that Lufthansa's desire to sell BMI made it an awful lot easier for IAG to complete a deal rather than if IAG had wanted to buy BMI directly from Bishop a couple of years ago when Lufthansa first did the deal with him
The deal for DLH to take control of BMI was done more than 10 years ago, and there were no competition issues with a German company buying a UK company. It is slightly different with a UK company buying a UK and the loss of competition on certain routes. The Scottish Government had valid concerns about the number of services from Heathrow to Scotland and the rise of fares where no competitor exists. Virgin's concerns were purely of self interest.
It should be remembered that Lufthansa did all they could to wriggle out of the deal with Bishop and took the case to the High Court, where they managed to reduce the final price from 450million to 340 million. SAS then forced them into buying their shareholding. All in all BMI has been a hugely expensive exercise for Lufthansa costing them over a Billion euros in 3 years. They just wanted out as quickly as possible and there was only one party that had the money and wherewithal to take on Mainline.
The human cost of this is that a very large number of people will be losing their jobs as BMI is integrated into BA. We still have no clear picture as to what is happening with Baby and Regional, maybe next week will bring some concrete information but I wont be holding my breath...