Region: New Zealand

Featured in GCR 100 2023

Antitrust lawyers in New Zealand face an increasingly busy competition authority that fielded 15 voluntary merger notifications in 2021 – up from 10 notifications a year earlier – and continued to progress major behavioural investigations and market studies.

12 December 2022

New Zealand’s Commerce Commission has made nine recommendations to remedy lacklustre competition in the residential building supplies market, while revealing it has opened a probe into one of the sector’s biggest companies over its use of quantity-based rebates.

07 December 2022

Local lawyers in New Zealand have praised the government’s decision to appoint John Small, a commissioner at the Commerce Commission, to take over as chair of the agency.

01 December 2022

New Zealand’s commerce minister has introduced a bill “to trigger an unprecedented shake-up of the grocery sector” by allowing suppliers to collectively negotiate with supermarket duopolists and appointing a sector-specific commissioner to the country’s competition watchdog.

22 November 2022

New Zealand’s antitrust watchdog has issued formal warnings to eight international freight forwarding companies that it says likely conspired with a pair of suppliers with which they also competed.

02 November 2022

New Zealand’s competition watchdog has published draft guidance on upcoming changes to the country’s misuse of market power rules, which include a new effects test and an authorisation process for conduct that leads to substantial public benefit.

19 October 2022

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has joined New Zealand’s Commerce Commission in approving a tie-up between motorhome rental companies THL and Apollo subject to a package of divestment remedies.

29 September 2022

Lawmakers in New Zealand have rejected a bill that would have exempted investors based in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development from requiring foreign investment control clearance.

26 September 2022

Motorhome rental companies THL Group and Apollo Tourism & Leisure have offered to divest a significant portion of the latter’s recreational vehicle business in Australia to address concerns that their merger would harm competition.

07 September 2022

New Zealand’s government has ordered the country’s supermarket duopolists to voluntarily provide rivals with fair access to their wholesale products or face price regulation.

26 August 2022