ACCC ruling today on NAB and Axa
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will today disclose its final decision on National Australia Bank's proposal to buy Axa Asia Pacific - nine months after NAB first gazumped an earlier bid by AMP and five months after the ACCC first said it would block NAB's bid.The initial rejection led to a series of undertakings by NAB and Axa, made public in August (after months of speculation) to address the ACCC's concern that Axa's North platform was too close a competitor with NAB's Navigator platform in the market for retail investment platforms for investors with complex investment needs.Axa last month provided an undertaking to divest North to a rival superannuation and wealth management company, IOOF. The North products would be retained and continue to be issued by the current Axa issuers. IOOF would provide platform administration services to support those products. NAB would provide exclusive rights to IOOF for the provision of platform administration services for the existing North products. NAB would not replicate or otherwise offer similar products to the North range for a period of three years.While these undertakings seemingly address the concerns listed by the ACCC in April, there is plenty of conjecture that the ACCC will identify additional reasons to block NAB's bid for Axa, though this may require some deft explanation on the part of the competition regulator.