The $6.5-bn acquisition offer to Asciano Ltd by Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is landed in trouble as the Australian regulator seeks an extensive review following the concern raised by the country's competition watchdog citing the reason that the Canadian firm's deal could lessen competition in rail haulage. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has postponed its decision on the acquisition offer made by Brookfield till 17 December.

Good news to Aussie Facebook lovers. Nearby Friends, a feature from Facebook can now be used by our mates in Down Under to locate their friends along the neighborhood or vice versa.

Australia - Vocus Communications will purchase M2 Group for A$1.93B. The merging will be completed in 2016. Vocus Communications Ltd. had come up with an agreement to purchase M2 Group for A$1.93B, that's US$1.35B worth. The deal will be the country's biggest acquisition in the telecom industry in four months, Bloomberg reported.

Buoyed with drop in Australian currency and rise in revenues from its asset management unit and risk management fees, Macquarie Group Ltd is confident of achieving 40 percent growth in profits for the first half of 2015 year.

Oil Search Ltd has refused the $8-billion takeover bid made by Woodside Petroleum Ltd, the biggest energy company in Australia. The rejection has turned out to be a major hurdle for Woodside Petroleum as the energy major is exploring low-cost LNG assets in Papua New Guinea (PNG), a nearby neighbor of Australia.

The Australian dollar has slightly recovered after Australian employers created more jobs than what economists forecasted last month, pulling down the unemployment rate. According to Bloomberg, the Australian dollar was at 69.70 U.S. cents as of 11:38 am in Sydney on Thursday, down by 0.7% from the previous day. It had been at 69.53 cents just before the statistics bureau announced the number of employed in Australia climbed to 17,400 in August. An increase of 5,000 jobs is expected by analysts, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey. The rate for the jobless went down from 6.3% to 6.2 % in July.

Asian shares markets got off to a watchful start on Wednesday as the mounting risks of a hike in U.S. interest rates as early as next month lifted the dollar and sovereign bond yields, pressuring currencies across the region.

The Australian state of New South Wales has proposed changing its mining approval process to give greater consideration to environmental concerns, potentially threatening a colliery expansion planned by mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd.

Germany's BMW AG (BMWG.DE), Australia's Macquarie Group (MQG.AX) and a host of U.S. private equity firms are expected to bid for Australia and New Zealand Banking Group's (ANZ.AX) more than $6 billion car and equipment loan book, a source said on Monday.

Sentiment at some of Asia's biggest firms has deteriorated as a slowing Chinese economy, Greek sovereign debt crisis and looming U.S. interest rate hike create deepening concern about the state of the world economy, a Thomson Reuters/INSEAD survey showed.