US credit reporting and data analytics company Equifax has cleared one of the regulatory hurdles on the way to its takeover of Veda Group, with the New Zealand Overseas Investment Office providing notification that it consents to the transaction. In September Veda announced that it had received an expression of interest from Equifax and in November it entered into a binding agreement, with the unanimous support of its board. Veda shareholders will meet to vote on the deal on February 8. Fitch Ratings has assigned its final ratings to the Triton Trust No. 7 Bond Series 2015-1. These are floating-rate notes, backed by Australian residential mortgages, originated by Columbus Capital. The A$150 million tranche of Class A1 notes is rated AAAsf; the Class B and Class D notes accounted for about $15 million in total, and were not rated by Fitch. At the cut-off date, the pool had 46.5 per cent lenders' mortgage insurance cover. The average current loan size was A$348,677; investment loans represent 33.7 per cent of the pool by balance, and interest-only loans represent 44.0 per cent, according to Fitch.