Canberra’s approval last week of Yanzhou Coal’s A$3.5bn ($3.23bn) bid for Felix Resources, one of the largest Chinese takeovers of an Australian company, provides pointers on how foreign deals need to be structured in order to win Australian government backing.

The toughest condition Canberra laid down was that Yancoal Australia – the entity that will own Felix, as well as Yanzhou’s Austar coal mine in New South Wales – must be relisted on the local stock exchange by 2012.