Mercury Seeks Clearance To Acquire Trustpower’s Retail Business

The Commerce Commission has received a clearance application from Mercury NZ Limited seeking to acquire Trustpower Limited’s retail business.

Mercury and Trustpower both generate and sell electricity and are two of the five ‘gentailers’ that operate in New Zealand (the others being Contact Energy, Genesis Energy and Meridian Energy). Both parties also sell gas to residential customers.

Under the proposed acquisition, Mercury will acquire Trustpower’s existing retail contracts to supply electricity, gas and fixed and wireless broadband and mobile phone services. Trustpower has approximately 234,000 customers across New Zealand. The proposed acquisition does not include any of Trustpower’s industrial or commercial electricity customers, nor any of its generation assets.

A public version of the clearance application is available on the Commission’s case register.

Background
We will give clearance to a proposed merger if we are satisfied that the merger is unlikely to have the effect of substantially lessening competition in a market.

Further information explaining how the Commission assesses a merger application is available on our website.

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