Download or read book Revising the U S Vertical Merger Guidelines written by Steven C. Salop and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mergers and acquisitions are a major component of antitrust law and practice. The U.S. antitrust agencies spend a majority of their time on merger enforcement. The focus of most merger review at the agencies involves horizontal mergers, that is, mergers among firms that compete at the same level of production or distribution.Vertical mergers combine firms at different levels of production or distribution. In the simplest case, a vertical merger joins together a firm that produces an input (and competes in an input market) with a firm that uses that input to produce output (and competes in an output market).Over the years, the agencies have issued Merger Guidelines that outline the type of analysis carried out by the agencies and the agencies' enforcement intentions in light of state of the law. These Guidelines are used by agency staff in evaluating mergers, as well as by outside counsel and the courts.Guidelines for vertical mergers were issued in 1968 and revised in 1984. However, the Vertical Merger Guidelines have not been revised since 1984. Those Guidelines are now woefully out of date. They do not reflect current economic thinking about vertical mergers. Nor do they reflect current agency practice. Nor do they reflect the analytic approach taken in the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines. As a result, practitioners and firms lack the benefits of up-to-date guidance from the U.S. enforcement agencies.

Download or read book U S Department of Justice Statement Accompanying Release of Revised Merger Guidelines June 14 1984 written by United States. Department of Justice and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book U S Vertical Merger Guidelines written by Koren Wong-Ervin and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This article offers the following recommendations, focusing on #3 and 6:1. Specifics on how the Agencies will implement the principles set forth in the Guidelines. The Guidelines state throughout that the Agencies “may consider” certain factors; this language should be revised to say “will” or “usually will” consider. 2. An explicit recognition that empirical evidence indicates that vertical mergers are generally procompetitive or benign and, as the Agencies have previously stated, “vertical mergers merit a stronger presumption of being efficient than do horizontal mergers.”3. A clear statement that the government has the burden on EDM given that such calculations are part of the math of the raising rivals costs (RRC) argument and the two cannot be analyzed in isolation before evaluating their net effect. In other words, EDM can prevent RRC, not just net it out. The prima facie case should not, however, extend to netting the two out, but rather to showing that the merger is likely to result in RRC.4. An explicit statement that the relevant inquiry for RRC is the effect on downstream competition and that raising the cost of an upstream input with no downstream effects does not warrant intervention. While examples in the Guidelines seem to suggest that the Agencies will follow this principle, an explicit statement would be helpful. 5. Explicitly requiring both the incentive and the ability to engage in anticompetitive conduct given that, without the ability there can be no harm, and lack of incentives is a strong indication that there are legitimate business reasons for the deal. 6. A recognition of the coordination problem presented by vertical dealing and that achieving EDM (and other efficiencies) through contracting presents challenges given the costly process of forming, administering, and enforcing contracts with independent suppliers.7. Replacing the 20% market-share language with a clear safe harbor and increasing the relevant market share threshold (but not necessarily the “related product” threshold) from 20% to at least 30%.

Download or read book Potential Competitive Effects of Vertical Mergers written by Steven C. Salop and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this short article is to aid practitioners in analyzing the competitive effects of vertical and complementary product mergers. It is also intended to assist the agencies if and when they undertake revision of the 1984 U.S. Vertical Merger Guidelines. Those Guidelines are out of date and do not reflect current enforcement or economic thinking about the potential competitive effects of vertical mergers. Nor do they provide the tools needed to carry out a modern competitive effects analysis. This article is intended to partially fill the gap by summarizing the various potential competitive harms and benefits that can occur in vertical mergers and the types of economic and factual analysis of competitive effects that can be applied to those mergers during the HSR review process. The analysis in the article also identifies several legal and policy issues that the agencies would consider when they undertake the process of revising the Vertical Merger Guidelines. The Appendix contains a listing and summary of the vertical merger cases challenged by the DOJ and FTC since 1994.

Download or read book U S Department of Justice Merger Guidelines written by United States. Department of Justice. Antitrust Division and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book U S Department of Justice Merger Guidelines June 14 1984 written by United States. Department of Justice and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Special Issue the U S Vertical Merger Guidelines written by Roger D. Blair and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines written by Steven C. Salop and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The FTC and DOJ requested comments on their draft Vertical Merger Guidelines in January 2020. This article is a complete alternative set of suggested Vertical Merger Guidelines that reflects and supplements the approach explained in the comments submitted by the author along with Jonathan. Baker, Nancy Rose and Fiona Scott Morton, as well as their other comments, and might be read in conjunction with those comments. This suggested revision of the Agencies' draft expands the list of potential competition harms and provides illustrative examples. It expands and unifies the discussion and treatment of potential competitive benefits. It deletes the quasi-safe harbor and suggests the circumstances under which competitive harms raise lessened concerns on the one hand and heightened concerns on the other.

Download or read book The 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines written by American Bar Association. Section of Antitrust Law and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 1992 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Recommendations and Comments on the Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines written by Jonathan B. Baker and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These recommendations and comments respond to the request by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division for public comment on the draft 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. We commend the agencies for updating the 1984 non-horizontal merger guidelines by recognizing the substantial advances in economic thinking about vertical mergers in the thirty-five years since those guidelines were issued. Our comments emphasize four issues: (i) the treatment of the elimination of double marginalization (“EDM”), particularly that the draft vertical merger guidelines appear inappropriately to make proof of cognizability part of the agencies burden and that they appear to inappropriately treat the merging firm's failure to have eliminated double marginalization pre-merger as proof that the merger would lead to EDM and that the post-merger EDM would be merger-specific; (ii) the seemingly arbitrary and inappropriately permissive safe harbor; (iii) the inappropriate (though perhaps unintended) apparent requirement that harms be quantified; and (iv) the inappropriate (though perhaps unintended) apparent requirement that the agencies show that foreclosure would not have been profitable before the merger. We are concerned that these features of the draft Guidelines will lead to under-enforcement and false negatives (including under-deterrence).

Download or read book Revising the Horizontal Merger Guidelines written by Dennis W. Carlton and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are currently in the process of revising their Horizontal Merger Guidelines. I explain that if a revision is to occur, then there are certain parts of the Guidelines that are most in need of revision, including the sections on unilateral and coordinated effects, committed and uncommitted entry, numerical concentration thresholds for safe harbors, and fixed costs. I also explain what should not become part of any new Guidelines, such as replacing the market definition/market concentration starting point with a competitive effects framework such as “upward pricing pressure.” The proposed Guidelines were published in April 2010. I present my reactions to the proposed Guidelines and discuss several caveats that courts, foreign antitrust agencies, and the business community should be aware of as they try to interpret what the proposed Guidelines suggest about appropriate antitrust policy.

Download or read book Revising the U S DOJ FTC Horizontal Merger Guidelines Accounting for Algorithmic Coordination written by Michal Gal and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Comment is written in response to DOJ-FTC Request for Information on Merger Enforcement. We explain that the use of pricing algorithms based on artificial intelligence methodologies (hereinafter: "pricing algorithms"), by one or both parties, should be taken into account in the merger analysis. This is due to the fact that the use of such algorithms might substantially increase the possibility of explicit or tacit collusive behavior. We then suggest several ways in which merger review and the Horizontal Merger Guidelines can incorporate such effects.

Download or read book U S Department of Justice Merger Guidelines written by United States. Department of Justice and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Federal Trade Commission and United States Department of Justice Commentary on the Horizontal Merger Guidelines written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Analyzing Vertical Mergers written by Hans Zenger and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following AT&T/Time Warner and the recent adoption of U.S. Vertical Merger Guidelines, vertical merger policy has again become a subject of intense debate. Some commentators have argued that vertical merger enforcement is too lax and should be invigorated, in particular in the U.S. Others see a greater risk of false positives and argue that the standard for intervention should remain high in such cases. Against this background, this article discusses the economics of assessing vertical mergers with a particular emphasis on recent European case practice.

Download or read book Evaluating the Evidence on Vertical Mergers written by Marissa Beck and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission issued draft Vertical Merger Guidelines on January 10, 2020. In the discussion on vertical merger policy, some commenters have relied on surveys of the empirical economic literature to justify a procompetitive presumption. This comment reviews two frequently cited surveys of empirical evidence on vertical integration as of 2005-2007, as well as more recent studies not included in those surveys, to determine the extent to which they find that the vertical integration they study was procompetitive or anticompetitive. Upon careful inspection, the evidence they provide on the change in welfare due to vertical mergers is decidedly mixed. Perhaps more importantly, taken as a whole, these studies do not provide evidence for the proposition that all or most vertical mergers are good for consumers.

Download or read book The EU Merger Regulation written by Alistair Lindsay and published by Sweet & Maxwell. This book was released on 2012 with total page 849 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the 4th edition of The EC Merger Regulation - a detailed guide to the method of merger control in the European Union. Fully revised for 2012, this comprehensive text describes how the European Commission determines approval of a notified merger, thereby providing information and techniques to complete merger deals successfully for companies operating in the European Union