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Global rules on foreign direct investment (FDI)
Cross-border acquisitions and investments increasingly trigger foreign direct investment (FDI) screening requirements.
Australia | Publication | August 2017
Today we take a stocktake of approaches to Australian energy market regulatory issues by launching the Norton Rose Fulbright monthly energy regulatory update and providing some insights from the ACCC/AER regulatory conference, held in Brisbane last week. Download the PDF to see the monthly regulatory update.
As regulators, rule-makers and stakeholders converged in agreeing that energy markets must be regulated in a manner that best serves the long-term interests of consumers (LTIC), they diverged on what exactly that means and how it might be done, particularly in electricity markets.
On the one hand, there are issues of affordability, contributed to by historical policy settings, market developments (including wholesale electricity prices), the level of market concentration and limited customer sophistication. Simultaneously, however, there are security and reliability issues, which coincide with the rise of renewable and retail-scale generation.
Whilst these developments further long-term imperatives to achieve 'low emissions' and show that there are pockets of consumers that are exercising real sophistication (known as 'prosumers'), there are also grid investment and efficiency issues that must be addressed. These may cut across short-term affordability goals.
As the AER, ACCC, AEMC, AEMO and jurisdictional regulators grapple with these jostling interests, they each have initiatives that seek to address different elements, including the following:
i. it is working with networks to ensure that their regulated and unregulated businesses are appropriately (but not overly) ring-fenced; and
ii. taking steps to achieve appropriate outcomes and engagement in anticipation of the abolition of Limited Merits Review, which would significantly limit the ability of networks to appeal revenue determinations made by the AER.
We are watching these and other developments closely. We will update you as they unfold. Please contact us in the interim, should you wish to know more.
Publication
Cross-border acquisitions and investments increasingly trigger foreign direct investment (FDI) screening requirements.
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