National Australia Bank (NAB) is confident it will retain financial planners aligned with Axa Asia Pacific (Axa AP) if the takeover goes ahead, a NAB chief has said.

"We have been quite successful so far in continuing to support advisers in the Aviva transaction, and they are still supporting us, which is fantastic," MLC chief executive Steve Tucker said.

"We've got a lot of work to do to encourage and convince advisers inside the Axa network that we are a good home for them, [but] we are quite confident that we are able to do that."

The combination of NAB's advice businesses and those of Axa AP would bring the total number of salaried and aligned advisers to more than 3,000, giving NAB a market share of about 20 per cent.

It would also give the group access to 6,500 external financial advisers who currently have a relationship with Axa AP.

Tucker said if the Axa deal succeeded, it was likely the brands of Axa AP-owned businesses Ipac, Charter Financial Planning and Genesys Wealth Advisers would be retained.

"We will continue to operate a portfolio of brands where they make sense and where advisers are comfortable operating under those brands," he said.

The banking group would seek to change the Axa-branded products and platforms to the MLC brand.

The takeover of Axa AP is still dependent on approval of Axa SA and the French parent's commitment to buy the Asian operations.

However, Axa SA is still bound to an exclusivity agreement with AMP until February 6, 2010. AMP launched a bid for Axa's local assets last month.

"We've had no engagement with Axa SA at this point," NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne said. "Obviously, they are in discussions with another party."

Although AMP said its recently revised offer was its best and final, it issued a statement that it would carefully consider its position.
 
The proposed deal is also still subject to regulatory approval.

"We have done an initial assessment and don't see any issues," Clyne said, "but we will obviously go through an official submission."

NAB announced yesterday a proposal to acquire Axa AP's Australian and New Zealand operations for $4.61 billion, trumping AMP's highest bid of about $4.4 billion.