(Reuters) – Pierre Poilievre, Canada’s Conservative party leader, called for the federal government to reject Royal Bank of Canada’s C$13.5 billion ($9.84 billion) offer to buy HSBC’s domestic unit, the Globe and Mail reported on Thursday.
Blocking the deal is a clear step the government could take to address affordability concerns, Poilievre said in an interview to the newspaper.
“If the biggest bank in Canada simply buys up a growing smaller player, then there’s no hope of ever having more competition in Canadian banking,” he told the newspaper. “If you remove HSBC, then you’ll be removing downward pressure on lending rates.”
Last month, Canada’s Competition Bureau said that RBC’s takeover of HSBC Canada was unlikely to hurt competition, clearing the way for the country’s largest bank to push ahead with its biggest acquisition.
Still, the regulator found that the deal would “result in a loss of rivalry between Canada’s largest and seventh-largest banks.”
($1 = 1.3723 Canadian dollars)
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(Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)