NEWS Corporation has been given the green light to acquire Australian Regional Media (ARM) from APN News and Media following a review by Australia’s competition watchdog.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched its review in August, and shortly after published a ‘statement of issues’ in October to gauge public response to the proposed acquisition.
Yesterday, Thursday 8 December, the ACCC announced it saw no major competition or media overlap issues with the planned $36.6 million sale of Australian Regional Media to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
ARM owns regional titles in Queensland including the Warwick Daily News, the Stanthorpe Border Post and the Toowoomba Chronicle.
The final hurdle to the sale proceeding is a required approval by the Foreign Investment Review Board, which has declined to comment on the timeframe around its review of the sale. It is understood it could make a decision in early 2017.
The ACCC’s approval follows News Corp’s purchase last week of the Australian News Channel, which produces Sky News in Australia and New Zealand.
It also comes as News Corp revealed plans this week to save $40 million in newspaper editorial costs by making more than 40 journalists, photographers and artists – including some at the Courier-Mail – redundant, either through voluntary or forced redundancies.
