Wesfarmers eyeing up Tower NZ, paper says

Wesfarmers may be sizing up Tower New Zealand following its bid for Oamps, The Sydney Morning Herald reports today.

The newspaper's Xchange column quotes Macquarie Bank saying: "We wonder if Tower New Zealand is next?"

Tower will put a proposal to split its New Zealand and Australian operations to shareholders later this month.

Promina is also understood to have run the rule over Tower in the past, the column said.

But with GPG sitting on 19 per cent of Tower shares, any takeover would need to be friendly.

Either way, a Tower suitor was unlikely to face competition from the sector's biggest hunter, QBE, which had previously signalled it was looking for non-life assets, the paper said.

Tower shares, which have traded between $1.73 and $3.58 in the last year, closed yesterday at $3.24.

- NZPA