The Commission recently made public its "guidelines" (or ersatz legislation that does not follow the proper procedure) on "vertical and conglomerate mergers". Those, in plain English which antitrust lawyers love to shun, are mergers between companies that do not compete with each other.
You can find the new guidelines here.
The new guidelines provide examples of the kind of vertical and conglomerate mergers that may significantly impede effective competition in the markets concerned. Thus, they outline the circumstances under which a vertical merger could be likely to result in competing companies being denied access to an important supplier or facing increased prices for their inputs and thus ultimately lead to higher prices for consumers. They also indicate levels of market share and concentration below which the Commission is unlikely to identify competition concerns (so-called "safe harbors").
These new guidelines complement the existing ones on "horizontal" mergers, that is mergers between competitors.
This is a really insightful topic that has impacts not just with Europe, but globally as well. Thanks for the link to the guidelines as well.
Posted by: Jordan Orkin | December 11, 2007 at 11:11 AM