ACCC kicks off reviews of Ooh Media’s acquisition of Adshel, and JC Decaux’s deal to buy APN Outdoor

Tim Burrowes

June 30, 2018 1:00

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has kicked off reviews of deals for out of home company Ooh Media’s bid to buy street furniture specialist Adshel for $570m and for JC Decaux to buy APN Outdoor.

The Ooh Media – Adshel review will examine:

How closely Ooh and Adshel compete with each other in both selling ad space and leasing out-of-home advertising sites;
Whether the price of out-of-home ads would go up, or the rents paid to site owners might go down as a result of the deal;
How easy it would be for the companies’ customers to switch to other suppliers after the proposed sale;
How easy it would be for site owners to switch to other out-of-home companies after the deal.

Last year the ACCC effectively blocked Ooh’s merger with APN Outdoor after indicating that bringing the two biggest players in the outdoor market would decrease competition.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.