The Commerce Commission has given clearance for Wilson Parking New Zealand Limited (Wilson Parking) to acquire five car park leases from Tournament Parking Limited (Tournament).

Wilson Parking originally applied for clearance to acquire the leases for 10 car parks from Tournament, but amended its application during the Commission’s investigation.

The acquisition would result in Wilson Parking operating four of Tournament’s car parks in central Wellington (Leftbank, Lombard, Marion Street and Plimmer Tower) and one of Tournament’s car parks in Auckland’s Newmarket precinct (Rialto).

The Commission is satisfied that the acquisition will not have, or would not be likely to have, the effect of substantially lessening competition in the affected markets.

Commission Chairman Dr Mark Berry said, “Each area affected by the acquisition contains a variety of on-street and off-street parking alternatives. We consider that Wilson Parking will continue to face significant competition from other parking operators."

A public version of the written reasons for the decision will be available shortly on the Clearances Register.

Background

Wilson Parking, a privately owned company, is New Zealand’s largest public parking provider, operating approximately 270 parking facilities nationwide. It is part of the wider Wilson Group, which operates parking sites throughout Australia and Asia.

Tournament is a privately owned company that, at the time of the application, operated 13 car parks in Auckland and Wellington.

The five car parks that were removed from the original application were in central Auckland and Eden Terrace. They were the Nelson Street, Airedale Street, St. Benedict’s Street, Upper Queen Street and Khyber Pass car parks. Wilson Parking is no longer intending to acquire these car parks.

We have assessed Wilson Parking’s clearance application under section 66 of the Commerce Act 1986 (Act). This assessment was separate from our prior investigation into Wilson Parking’s July 2013 acquisition of approximately 63 car park leases and management agreements from Tournament, which was conducted under section 47 of the Act.

In that investigation we did not consider the acquisition of the five car parks that were the subject of the clearance application.