oOh!media and APN Outdoor's $1.6 billion merger is understood to have been called off after the competition regulator raised a number concerns around the possible dominance of the new entity in the out-of-home advertising market.
The merger of equals, revealed by The Australian Financial Review in December, would have created a company with 55 per cent of out out-of-home market.
The nixing of the merger will disappoint the two companies and shareholders who had been arguing the out-of-home advertising market was only a small proportion of the overall advertising market.
Key to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's statement of issues released on May 4 was that it did not look at the total Australian advertising market, rather it focused on just the out-of-home (our outdoor marketing) sector.
More to come...
