FIRB Transparency and the Colmer Doctrine Revisited

Nomura’s head of mergers and acquisitions, Grant Chamberlain, has called for greater transparency in the regulation of foreign direct investment, as reported in The Australian:

There were generally clear guidelines when it came to FIRB policy, but “but when it comes to SOEs, the picture changes”.

He said the only public information recently had been the “Colmer doctrine”, comments made by then FIRB executive director Patrick Colmer at a conference on Australia-China investment in September 2009.

Mr Colmer said the Australian government preferred that foreign investment by state-owned enterprises was kept to less than 50 per cent for greenfields projects and less than 15 per cent for major producers.

Mr Chamberlain said that it was impossible to actually get a copy of Colmer’s comments and that there was confusion about what would be considered as a “major producer”.

In fact, it is possible to get a copy of the speech here, but only due to a Freedom of Information request I made of the FIRB. The saga behind the speech and my efforts to obtain a copy are detailed in this op-ed in The Australian. Chamberlain’s speech proves the point I made in my original FOI application that releasing the speech was in the public interest.

posted on 29 February 2012 by skirchner in Economics, Financial Markets, Foreign Investment

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