Tribunal publishes reasons for ANZ-Suncorp approval
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The news: The Australian Competition Tribunal has published its full set of reasons for granting unconditional authorisation for ANZ's acquisition of Suncorp Bank.
The partially redacted document says the ACCC's concerns about coordination among the country's major banks in the home loans market didn't "rise above conjecture."
The competition regulator had feared that the deal would increase the likelihood of banks pricing and reacting to the market in concert, without explicitly colluding.
The numbers: The ACCC had referred in its evidence to the tribunal to a 22% increase in retail deposits for ANZ as a result of the deal. The tribunal said this figure is "apt to mislead" as the increase would be in total deposits from $174 billion to $179 billion, compared with a 17% increase in mortgages.
"Retail deposits as a percentage of mortgages would only increase from 53% to 55%," the tribunal said, adding that it was "not persuaded that this movement would materially increase the likelihood of coordination in the home loans market."
The context: The publication of the full reasons today comes after lawyers had agreed on which parts of the tribunal's findings needed to remain confidential, following its announcement to approve the deal on 20 February.
The decision was published after weeks of hearings in December 2023.
What they said: ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said in a statement that though the review panel reached a different decision to the competition regulator, “in complex cases that require the assessment of significant volumes of information and data, different decision makers can reasonably arrive at different conclusions".
"The availability of review of the ACCC’s merger authorisation decisions is an important check and balance for this administrative decision-making process,” ACCC Chair Cass-Gottlieb said.
She added that the Tribunal had "largely adopted the ACCC’s legal and economic framework for assessing the merger and its impacts, although ultimately formed a different view about the significance of the proposed acquisition on competition.”
The source: Australian Competition Tribunal
