With the South Africa's antitrust regulator Competition Tribunal giving a conditional approval to the Glencore International's $36 billion acquisition of coal producer Xstrata on Tuesday, the sole outstanding requirement for the merger transaction to go ahead is an approval from China.

The South African antitrust regulator's approval to the merger is a significant development, especially since commodities trader Glencore and coal producer Xstrata - both based in Switzerland; in Baar and Zug respectively - had revealed in a last-week statement that the transaction had already received a due approval in a number of other jurisdictions, except South Africa and China.

The companies had also mentioned in the statement that they were extending the deadline for the completion of the merger deal from January 31 to March 15, in the wake of the "ongoing" regulatory processes in South Africa and China.

However, the transaction has now been conditionally approved by the Pretoria-based Competition Tribunal, which gave its go-ahead to the deal saying that the Glencore-Xstrata merger "may be implemented in South Africa."

The Tribunal also said that the number of job losses for skilled workers in the merged company - resulting from Glencore's takeover of Xstrata - should be restricted to 80 and for unskilled workers to 100; and that the retrenchment process should continue for a maximum of two years after all its antitrust approvals have been duly received by the merged entity.