Good morning, ANZ’s $4.9bn takeover of Suncorp Bank should be blocked because it will damage competition – raising the prospect of a share buyback or a change of focus to acquisitions outside banking, influential sector analyst Brian Johnson says. The analyst at investment bank Jefferies is a staunch critic of the transaction, which he believes will markedly lower competition by removing Suncorp as a provider of loans and banking products. “We believe ANZ’s proposed acquisition of Suncorp Bank is anti-competitive, ” he writes in a note to clients. “Incremental housing price competition comes from the broker channel where ANZ and Suncorp Bank are more reliant. Johnson says about 52 per cent of ANZ’s loans were sourced from brokers, compared with the Commonwealth Bank at 46 per cent, National Australia Bank with 44 per cent and Westpac at 45 per cent. Suncorp sources about 75 per cent from brokers. Shell has had another problem at its troubled $US12bn ($17.4bn) Prelude floating LNG project off the northwest coast , with production yet to restart after a fire days before Christmas. A “small fire” detected on December 21 put a halt to LNG exports from the facility, and shipments from the plant have yet to resume as Shell works through the process of restarting the production plant. As technology editor David Swan writes, creditors of collapsed financier Antra Group have voted to keep the company alive, despite a recommendation from administrators that it be wound up. Antra, led by Raymond Petty, propped up Melbourne start-up fund Fundsquire – where Petty’s son Damien is a director – through a series of undocumented loans, according to administrators Jonathon Keenan and Peter Krejci of BRI Ferrier. Keenan and Krejci said in order for a deal to repay creditors - proposed by Raymond Petty - to be successful, the value of the Fundsquire business needed to increase from zero currently to between $63m and $115m. |