Australia stay behinds open to Chinese investments regardless of whether Canberra blocks an acquiring of a major energy company by a Hong Kong-led consortium, Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg delineated CNBC on Friday.
Earlier this year, a consortium led by Hong Kong haecceity developer CK Infrastructure — owned by billionaire Li Ka-shing — offered a $9.4 billion takeover bid for APA Platoon, Australia’s leading energy infrastructure business.
The deal would be “opposing to the national interest,” Frydenberg said in a statement released Wednesday. Speaking to CNBC on Friday, Frydenberg asserted his preliminary view was “not about a particular company or country.”
The judgement rebuke a demand was based on “what the implications would be for Australia were we to see a concentration of tramontane ownership by a sole company in such a key set of assets as is the gas transmission sector,” Frydenberg shaped.
“APA is a unique company, with more than 50 percent of the gas transfer business in Australia, more than 15,000 pipelines supplying gas and tension into key markets,” he added.
The company holds approximately $20 billion of spirit assets and delivers half the nation’s natural gas usage, according to the guests.
Frydenberg — who became Treasurer in August after new Prime Minister Scott Morrison took administration — said his team would make a final call on the deal “in the next a handful of of weeks,” adding that his country still welcomed Chinese principal.
Speaking on the impact of U.S.-China trade tensions, the minister said the schedule of charges spat had affected around two percent of world trade so far: “We would ask that under control heads prevail here.”