Commerce Commission

The Commerce Commission has released their decision regarding the proposed merger of Sky Television and Vodafone and it’s not the news Mt Wellington was hoping for.

The Commerce Commission has declined to grant clearance for the proposed merger of Sky Network Television and Vodafone New Zealand.

The Commission’s assessment focused on the impact of the proposed merger on competition in both the broadband and mobile telecommunications markets. To grant clearance, the Commission would need to be satisfied that the proposed merger would not be likely to substantially lessen competition in any market in New Zealand.   Read more »

Damien Grant discusses the proposed StuffMe merger:

It is deeply satisfying to see the heads of Fairfax and NZME grovel before the inquisitors of the Commerce Commission in a forlorn attempt to stave off the day they will need to all get real jobs. For the past two decades we have had to watch as journalism has been debased from an ancient and noble craft to a festering swamp of leftists who confuse advocacy with reporting.

On the mezzanine floor of the insolvency firm where I work sits a century’s worth of the Truth, once a proud and respected newspaper, which chased the modern equivalent of clickbait by dropping real reporting for page three girls and pandering to whims of the sex industry.

Its liquidation is a harbinger of the demise of the newspaper as we know it and in an attempt to stave off their own oblivion and searching for a business model that can sustain some semblance of news Fairfax and NZME want to do a deal.

Read more »

The ComCom has issued a draft determination rejecting the bid by Fairfax and NZME for a merger of the two companies.

NBR reports:

The Commerce Commission says a proposed merger of New Zealand’s two biggest media companies will substantially lessen competition and lead to reduced editorial quality.

In  draft decision published this morning, the regulator said its preliminary view was to decline to authorise the merger.

The two companies had sought clearance or authorisation to combine their businesses in New Zealand, which include the two biggest news websites stuff.co.nz and nzherald.co.nz.

NZME owns eight daily and two weekly newspapers, 24 community publications, six magazine titles, ten radio stations and 38 websites.

Fairfax operates the largest print media network in New Zealand, featuring nine daily and three weekly newspapers, 61 community publications, ten magazine titles and six websites.  Read more »

My last post ‘One reason for low productivity‘ suggested that New Zealand’s scores of decision-making committees with no skin in the game are expensive and inefficient.

A prime example is the Commerce Commission.

They do make some important decisions, but there are only a handful of decisions each week they have to get through. In the 2014/15 year they had 15 mergers to look at and another 14 market conduct cases. They set two telecommunications prices, set line charges for 15 electricity lines companies and 10 gas distributors, and wrote reports on 3 airports! There were fair trading-type actions taken too but they are not all cleared individually by Commissioners.

There is an awful lot of work that has to be done by staff to get theses decisions researched and written up, but commissioners shouldn’t be spending huge amounts of expensive hours going through these things in immense detail. Yet, you can see by their remuneration, they do just that.   Read more »

Three years ago we warned readers about a telco called Intagr8.

Unfortunately we were right and the company has now collapsed.

A controversial telecommunications company accused of misleading sales tactics has collapsed, leaving thousands of business customers around the country in the lurch.

Intagr8 Ltd was placed in liquidation on Thursday, the same day that Vodafone announced it was severing ties with the company. It is understood Vodafone is owed at least $1m.

Intagr8 offered bundled deals for phones and equipment and the collapse means around 2500 business customers around New Zealand are left with finance company contracts, but potentially no phone lines.

According to the Companies Office website, Damien Grant of Waterstone Insolvency was appointed liquidator on Thursday and his first report is due next week.

Grant said he would investigate why the business failed, but Intagr8’s owner Murray Taylor had blamed it on negative publicity.    Read more »

Richard Harman from Politik reports that big business is feeling a bit hurty over proposed changes to the Commerce Commission by Paul Goldsmith.

Though Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Paul Goldsmith is playing it down, a Government review of competition law that he announced yesterday has the potential to make radical changes that could affect some of New Zealand’s largest companies.

Mr Goldsmith describes the review as a “health check” on the current law.

But accompanying documentation from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment says the current law, administered by the Commerce Commission.

The Ministry argues that it has not been working satisfactorily because it is:

• failing to punish anti-competitive conduct by powerful firms and
• too complex to allow for cost-effective and timely application,

Commenting on the announcement, the law firm Chapman Tripp, says the prospect of amendments to the Commerce Act will have implications for the commercial and compliance strategies of New Zealand’s most strategically important companies.

Read more »

Prime Minister John Key says he’s not sure why more mobile truck shop operators aren’t being prosecuted.

A year-long Commerce Commission investigation into 32 traders found 31 of them were in breach of the Fair Trading Act, Consumer Finance Act and the Credit Contracts Act, but only a couple are being investigated further.

“Why they’re not prosecuting all of them, I don’t know,” Mr Key said on the Paul Henry programme this morning.

“But ultimately… people need to be held to account.”

Labour has called for truck shop operators to be licensed, so their right to do business can be simply revoked.

“One of the easiest things to do is get in a truck and go around and sell goods – you don’t have to be licensed, there’s no checks on you, you’re preying on the vulnerable,” he said last week.

Mr Key says the Government will look into why the Commerce Commission isn’t taking a harder line. Read more »

Here in New Zealand serious allegations were levelled at Countdown for the way they were raping their suppliers.

The Commerce Commission received more than 90 complaints from informants and they decided that there was nothing to see here and told everyone to move along.

In Australia the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took Coles to court and slammed them. Coles is now making multi-million dollar payouts tot heir suppliers.

The Coles supermarket chain has refunded millions of dollars to suppliers as part of a dispute resolution process.

Coles appointed former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett as an independent arbiter after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took the company to court over claims of unconscionable conduct towards its suppliers.

Mr Kennett recommended the supermarket suppliers, including farmers and food processors, be awarded financial settlements as part of that process.

In December last year, the Federal Court found Coles had demanded payments from suppliers to which it was not entitled by threatening harm to suppliers, and withheld money from suppliers it had no right to withhold.     Read more »

After the PR debacle Countdown went through telling Kiwi suppliers that ‘all is well, we’ll look after you’ during a Commerce Commission investigation, you’d think Countdown would get back to basics.

But their recent print ad seems to suggest they’re having an identity crisis and now want to be a hardware store.

Mark Reynolds, who in between being the spin merchant for Todd Corp’s Nova Energy and picking fights with hater Giovanni Tiso and dreary Drinnan, posted a print ad for Countdown.

Read more »

Milford Asset Management says it has contacted other KiwiSaver fund managers to explain an “inadvertent breach of conventions” in Google search terms used for marketing purposes.

This comes after rival fund manager Fisher Funds lodged a complaint about Milford’s use of its brand in a so-called “ambush marketing” campaign where it used other KiwiSaver providers’ names to try to attract potential customers to its own website by paying for search words.

Hence, when someone typed “Fisher kiwisaver” into Google, an ad for “Milford Fisher KiwiSaver” topped the search list with a link to the Milford website.

“It has never been our intention to use such tactics in our marketing,” Milford managing director Anthony Quirk said today.

Except that you were.   And this is yet another incident in Milford Asset Management’s murky existence.  You have to love it – a business that depends on trust more than most, and they simply don’t appear to care unless they’re caught.   Read more »