Australian betting operator Tabcorp Holdings isn’t taking chances that an interloper could spoil its plans to merge with rival Tatts Group.

On Friday, Tabcorp announced that it had taken a roughly 10% stake in Tatts via a cash-settled equity swap with investment bankers UBS that gives Tabcorp certain voting rights. The purchase appears intended to ward off any competitors that might try to make their own acquisition play for Tatts.

In October, the two companies announced plans to join forces to create an Australian betting monster with annual revenue of over AUD5b. Our own Rafi Farber slammed the merger as a nakedly anti-competitive move intended to create a single booming voice with which to badger the government to impose further restrictions on Tabcorb/Tatts’ online rivals, most of which are local divisions of international firms.

Those online bookies have already protested the apparent carveout that Tabcorp and Tatts received via the ban on online in-play betting contained in the proposed amendments to the Interactive Gambling Act (IGA) 2001, which the two domestic firms had long pressed the government to implement.