Competition Watchdog May Get to Decide on All Mergers Under New Regime

Treasurer Jim Chalmers wants the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to examine every corporate merger under a new law which would make it mandatory for companies to report their intentions. He says the voluntary scheme currently in place is too “hit and miss” as the ACCC only assesses about a quarter of all mergers, meaning there’s a high chance it could miss an anti-competitive combination. Australia is one of only three OECD countries without a compulsory merger notification law. “We don’t actually know if the right mergers are being scrutinised so we are going to fix that and that’s because we want good mergers to proceed more quickly, but we want concerning mergers to receive a bit more robust scrutiny,” Mr. Chalmers said....