Following the office’s approval on the $175 sale of New Zealand company
Tower to
Vero Insurance of Australia, the New Zealand Party has labelled the Overseas Investment Office to be a rubber-stamping machine.
According to Winston Peters, NZ First Leader and MP for Northland, the competency of the OIO has to be “seriously questioned.”
“Last week the Commerce Commission declined Vero Insurance’s takeover of Tower but today the OIO released its decision summaries for June 2017 approving the sale,” Peters said.
He continued that the takeover, as previously mentioned by Commerce Commission chairman Mark Berry, would have lessened competition and removed Tower as being the only independent competitor to Vero and
IAG, which already have 76 per cent control of New Zealand’s insurance market.
“If nothing else it shows again the OIO is not doing its job,” he added.
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