There's talk of vendor regret on the part of Lloyds TSB and HBOS over their decision in early October to sell Bank of Western Australia to Commonwealth Bank of Australia - a takeover that yesterday easily won clearance from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.CBA agreed to pay a bit more than one times net assets for BankWest. CBA has said it will maintain BankWest's network in Western Australia and said it will review the bank's expansion strategy in eastern Australia, though this may prove unnecessary as the brakes are already on.The ACCC yesterday said it will not oppose the proposed acquisition, one that it said was unlikely to substantially lessen competition.The takeover received firm support from two more financial regulators, APRA and the RBA, and will no doubt receive the formal approval of Australia's treasurer, Wayne Swan.In published reasons the ACCC wrote that it considered that should it decline to authorise the takeover by CBA it assumed HBOS/Lloyds would continue to operate BankWest but found that "BankWest's operating model would change considerably in this time".In the media release announcing the decision the ACCC noted that BankWest's "aggressive pricing was driven by its east coast expansion strategy and [this] therefore would not continue because of the cessation of these plans."The ACCC relied in its market inquiries for this proposal in part on the inquiries conducted in relation to the Westpac takeover of St George.In particular the ACCC reiterated its view that financial services was now a national market, though branch-based competition in relation to transaction accounts might still be viewed as having a regional base.The distinctive factor on this occasion was the funding issues that forced HBOS' hand as a seller (and indeed forced HBOS into a government-arranged merger in Britain with Lloyds).The ACCC wrote that HBOS Australia and BankWest provided submissions and internal documents that "support this view of the bank's likely strategy" should it continue to be owned by HBOS. The ACCC wrote that "the RBA and APRA also indicated that they did not consider that BankWest would be in a position to provide strong and sustainable competition going forward."Commonwealth Bank will control a hefty chunk of the deposit market in Western Australia; 46 per cent according to estimates published by the ACCC, as well as 38 per cent of the automatic teller machine fleet in the state and 25 per cent of branches.The ACCC noted that the CBA also controls 33 per cent of Victorian deposits (where CBA bought State Bank of Victoria 18 years ago) and 38 per cent of deposits in Tasmania (where CBA bought Colonial Trust Bank eight years ago)."The decision today by the ACCC should not be viewed as a green light to the acquisition of other regional banks by the big four," the ACCC wrote in its media release, though whether this will deter a future purchase of, say, Suncorp by a major bank is doubtful.