ACCC Executes Search Warrant at WiseTech, the Industry's Default Software

WiseTech Global disclosed on Aug. 19, through an Australian Securities Exchange filing, that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had executed a search warrant at its premises, seeking documents and electronic data relating to global logistics services and software. The company said it would cooperate fully. The ACCC confirmed the warrant to FreightWaves, described the investigation as ongoing and declined further comment.

Shares closed 8.7% lower at A$39.58, the steepest single-day fall since late June.

A search warrant permits investigators to collect records. It establishes nothing about whether any law was broken, and the filing names no product, transaction, customer, contract or division.

Why this is not the last investigation continuing

Coverage has framed the warrant as following on from the ACCC's earlier review of the e2open acquisition. The regulator's own record suggests something more distinct.

That earlier matter was a merger investigation, run under the substantial-lessening-of-competition test. It concluded. On Dec. 30, 2025 the ACCC accepted a court-enforceable undertaking under section 87B requiring the divestiture of Expedient, and stated plainly in announcing it that this resolved the enforcement investigation.

Eight months later a search warrant is a different instrument. Merger reviews proceed largely through voluntary and compulsory information requests. A warrant is a coercive step, and WiseTech's disclosure describes the subject broadly — possible contraventions of the Competition and Consumer Act — without reference to e2open, Expedient or CargoWise.

What that new investigation concerns has not been stated by either party, and speculating about it would be unwise. What can be said is that the resolved matter and the current one are separate proceedings, and reporting the second as a continuation of the first misdescribes it.

The finding already on the record

The January release contains a sentence worth reading carefully. ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said the regulator considers that WiseTech already holds substantial market power in the supply of logistics software.

That is a competition regulator's stated position, published, about a company its officers have now searched.

The January matter also had sharper edges than the coverage conveyed. The ACCC noted that WiseTech completed the e2open acquisition before the review concluded, despite being aware of the significant concerns being raised. Under the informal regime then in force, no advance clearance was required. Under the new regime that commenced Jan. 1, 2026, notifiable acquisitions cannot complete before approval, and completing one without clearance exposes the transaction to being automatically void.

The regulator was also specific about who it was protecting. Its concern was that the acquisition combined two significant suppliers of logistics software with specific customs clearance capability, and it recorded receiving significant concerns from users of logistics software during the investigation.

The concentration underneath

WiseTech's own figures explain why a regulator cares. More than 20,000 logistics companies across 193 countries. Twenty-four of the twenty-five largest global freight forwarders. Forty-seven of the fifty largest third-party logistics providers. The e2open acquisition extended the network to more than 500,000 connected enterprises.

Those numbers describe a piece of infrastructure rather than a product. Customs entries, shipment data, carrier workflows and customer-facing operations run through it for most of the industry at once.

What it means for forwarders

The exposure is concentration, not this investigation. Whatever the ACCC finds, the structural fact is unchanged: for a large forwarder there is no comparable alternative at scale. That is a single point of dependency for pricing, roadmap and continuity, and it is worth naming in a risk register rather than treated as a fact of life.

Know your exit position before you need it. The practical question is not whether you would switch — almost nobody can — but what your contract says about data export format, historical entry records, migration assistance and notice periods on price changes. Most operators have never read those clauses. They become expensive to discover during a renewal.

Australian and New Zealand users get a real alternative. The undertaking requires Expedient to be sold to an ACCC-approved purchaser capable of running it as a viable independent competitor. That is a regulator deliberately manufacturing a competitor with customs clearance capability. If you operate in that market, the buyer's identity is worth watching.

User complaints demonstrably moved the outcome. The ACCC said it received significant concerns from software users during the investigation, and that those concerns informed its view that the acquisition could lead to higher prices or lower service quality. Regulators cannot see pricing behaviour inside private contracts unless customers tell them. That route stays open.

Watch renewal pricing across the sector, not just your own. The regulator's stated concern was higher prices or reduced service quality. That is a testable claim, and the evidence for it sits distributed across thousands of individual renewals — which is precisely why nobody sees the pattern.