(New Zealand) The Commerce Commission of New Zealand has given ANZ the green light to forge ahead with its plan to buy National Bank of New Zealand.ANZ was the only Australian bank with an application left on the table after Commonwealth Bank and Westpac withdrew their bids earlier in the month.
The only other serious contender is kiwi wool businessman Phil Verry and his Black Horse Holdings Consortium which is believed to have secured funding from an overseas but as yet unnamed party.
The Commission’s acting general manager Geoff Thorn said the commission was satisfied that ANZ’s proposed acquisition “would not have, nor would be likely to have, the effect of substantially lessening competition in the relevant markets due to the competition provided by other major banks”.
ANZ currently has about 14 percent of the New Zealand market compared with Westpac’s 10 percent and NAB’s near 20 percent.
The news comes on the same day the New Zealand press speculated that a float of NBNZ was a very real possibility as buyers of the British-owned bank dropped out of the bidding.