An acquisition by Rupert Murdoch hit a snag.

The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal threw a new obstacle in the path of the $1.52-billion takeover bid by Rupert Murdoch for the nation’s largest media group. The television and radio licensing body said it would hold an urgent inquiry to establish whether the bid by Murdoch’s News Corp. for the Herald and Weekly Times breaches a law restricting foreign ownership of Australian broadcast companies to 15%. Australian-born Murdoch’s problems with the ABT arise from his adoption of U.S. citizenship in late 1985 to enable News Corp. to acquire the Metromedia television group in the United States.