Photo: 123RF
Campervan maker and retailer Tourism Holdings (THL) has cleared the last significant hurdle to its merger with Australia's Apollo Tourism & Leisure.
Australlia's regulator, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), has followed the Commerce Commission, and given the deal the green light subject to promised asset divestments.
Apollo will sell various parts of its motorhome operations to the Jucy Group for $45 million.
"While there remain other conditions to the proposed merger to be satisfied, clearance from the New Zealand and Australian competition regulators were considered the most significant," THL's chair Cathy Quinn said.
"We now have much greater confidence that the merger will proceed."
The merger still needed what were expected to be relatively straightforward approvals from the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board, Apollo's shareholders, and the Supreme Court of Queensland.
Earlier this week THL chief executive Grant Webster told RNZ Business the divestment would not affect the fundamental business case supporting the merger.
The two companies revealed the merger last December, but have taken longer than expected to satisfy the regulators' concerns, and also slightly changed the terms of the deal to acknowledge a rise in the value of some Apollo assets. Completion of the merger is expected by the end of the year.
Shares in Tourism Holdings, which had been on a trading halt pending the regulators' decisions, rose 2.6 percent on the news.