Hello and welcome to another Emlex podcast. I'm Laurel Henning, senior correspondent at Emlex,

and today I'm in our Melbourne offices in the heart of the city's business district and face to

face with Australasian managing editor James Panicki. Hi James. Hello Laurel, great to be in the same room

again finally. Great to see you. Today we're going to discuss a deal that James has been reporting on.

An unsolicited 13 billion Australian dollar or 9.5 billion US dollar by today's rates offer from a consortium

led by Hong Kong's CK infrastructure holdings for Australian natural gas pipeline operator APA.

CK infrastructure or CKI invests in energy, transportation and water networks, as well as waste management and household infrastructure.

It's also the largest overseas infrastructure investor in Australia and has a history of taking

public investments private, which we'll get into you later. Now, the multi-billion dollar bid is not

without its regulatory hurdles, so James, tell us a bit about the legislative scrutiny surrounding the deal.

Laurel, where to start?

You knew I was going to say that.

Look, there's clearly a lot of regulatory background to this deal.

It has everything to do with the tightening of Australia's investment regime

when dealing with Chinese companies, and that includes Hong Kong companies, obviously.

It's not just about hard-nosed competition issues, but there are also a range of security concerns

at play as well. As for the basics of the deal, APA Group is Australia's largest natural gas infrastructure business. It operates major pipelines and a few power stations and wind farms. So it's got everything covered. It's listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, which is Australia's stock exchange. And in June, it received an offer from a consortium comprising CK infrastructure holdings, which you just mentioned,

CK asset holdings and power asset holdings.

All three of those are Hong Kong-based companies.

We can talk about what those companies are

and what the deal entails a little bit longer.

But to be cleared, the deal needs to go through

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