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ARTICLE · 29 SEPTEMBER 2011

Prime Minister Says Free Market Principles Will Be Tempered By Reality

Stikeman Elliott LLP
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Bloomberg News reported yesterday that in an interview given on September 21, Canada's Prime Minister Harper confirmed that capital from China and other countries is welcome provided that acquisitions of Canadian businesses are "economic in nature and don’t have other strategic or political objectives".

CanadaAntitrust/Competition Law
Competition/Antitrust Group
Competition/Antitrust Group
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Bloomberg News reported yesterday that in an interview given on September 21, Canada's Prime Minister Harper confirmed that capital from China and other countries is welcome provided that acquisitions of Canadian businesses are "economic in nature and don't have other strategic or political objectives". Bloomberg quoted the Prime Minister as saying "[a]s much of an advocate as I am of free markets, I don't think that governments realistically can just make the assumption that everybody else is operating on a market basis."

With respect to the BHP-Potash transaction that was rejected under the Investment Canada Act the Prime Minister stated: "If it had been in Australia, to put the shoe on the other foot, I don't believe that takeover would have been approved. ... I think the objectives of BHP, in fairness, probably were beyond merely what we would consider good business in a market sense, but probably more an issue of strategic positioning, and that strategic

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