Concentration in Australian Industry - Has it Gone Too Far?

Abstract

In common with the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, Australia in the middle years of the current decade experienced a crescendo of takeover activity which gave rise to a number of issues of interest to lawyers. It would be idle to expect agreement on whether particular takeovers are desirable but there was a reaction to the mergers and attempted mergers of 1984-7 which questioned whether existing controls on mergers were adequate, and whether Australian industry was becoming too concentrated, with control passing to a small band of players who were, perhaps, engaged in an elaborate game of marshalling assets and companies simply for what could be made by way of profits in the process, rather than in the longer term interests of those companies' businesses or of the wider community.