Horizontal Shareholdings and Effects on the Competitive Structure of the Market

Download or read book Horizontal Shareholdings and Effects on the Competitive Structure of the Market written by Mario Cistaro and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent studies have linked the concentration of common shareholding in competing corporations among the same group of minority shareholders with competition concerns. This paper will examine whether the correlation between the structure of corporate ownership captured by common shareholding and the structure of the market(s) in which the companies operate might determine anticompetitive effects and be considered illegal under antitrust laws. To this regard, after describing the main theoretical and empirical foundations for the competition concerns associated to common shareholding, I will analyze the arguments raised both in favor and against the enforcement of the antitrust laws and, in particular as regards the latter, the lack of evidence on the causal mechanism through which common shareholdings determine anticompetitive effects. While in the US, the Clayton Act seem to ban merger and stock acquisition that are likely to have anticompetitive effects regardless of whether the mechanism for those effects is known, a different conclusion should be reached with regard to the European Union antitrust laws. Under the EU merger regulation competitive effects of common shareholdings are captured if, and only, they confer control, being control the causal mechanism preidentified by the EU law to link competitive effects to a transaction that modifies the structure of the market.