This morning the competition regulator the ACCC announced it intends to appeal the decision of a Federal Court to throw out its blocking of rail network operator's decision to sell its Acacia Ridge Terminal to Pacific national.
Aurizon flagged that the proposed terminal sales to Pacific National for around $205 million is part of a strategy for it to close or exit its loss-making Intermodal business. It has already closed its Intermodal business outside of Queensland and sold another part of it to Linfox in January 2019 for $7.3 million.
Apparently the ACCC wants to appeal the Federal court's verdict that the sale should now be allowed to go ahead because Pacific National offered an 'access undertaking' to the terminal for rival operators during the court case.
"Among other things, we will argue that the Court made an error by accepting the undertaking, and then using it as a relevant fact when determining whether there was likely to be a substantial lessening of competition," ACCC chief Rod Sims said.
Aurizon now cannot go ahead with the terminal sale until a potentially lengthy appeal is heard.
"Aurizon does not accept this assertion and is of the view this matter was fully considered by the Federal Court and the decision handed down in May 2019 was clear and comprehensive" the company responded.
I must admit to not being a fan of the publicly funded ACCC and its logic in reaching some decisions. In the Aurizon case it now faces the embarrassing prospect of having its interpretation of different legal points twice rejected by judges over the same case.
Another recent ACCC decision was to controversially block the proposed merger between TPG Telecom Ltd (ASX: TPM) and Vodafone Australia (after a very lengthy consultation process) on the grounds that competition will increase in 5G or 4G mobile if they're kept apart.
However, Vodafone currently cannot even provide full network coverage across Sydney's CBD and inner west for example, while TPG is a million miles from building its own competitively effective 5G or wider national mobile networks and has effectively flagged that it cannot afford to.
This is no surprise given its highly leveraged balance sheet and the eye-watering amounts of capital required to build competitive mobile network infrastructure.
As such Australians will be left with two effective national network providers under the verdict in Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) and Optus. Already we've seen the Telstra share price take off as the ACCC's verdict is widely considered a win for its competitive dominance in mobile going forward.
The TPG / Vodafone merger decision is also currently pencilled in for a federal court date in 2019.
