Critically assess the working of the EU's merger control Regulation - Essay Example

For the past two decades, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) hold the greatest percentage among modes of entry by foreign investors and growth activities of domestic companies; particularly true for the developed economies. One probable reason for this trend may be the high availability of information regarding the value of mergers and acquisitions. M&As targets usually obtain good values by the financial markets, which is more attractive and tempting for the investing companies and is considered one of the more important factors that affect investors’ choices.

Mergers occur when two or more companies, with the consent of both parties involved, engage into a merge, in order to create business synergies from the new single entity formed, rather than existing separately on the market. There is a mutual agreement between the managements of two or more companies, on the grounds of exchanging shares of the merging firms with shares of the new entity, which reflects the name of the both companies engaged in the merger. Acquisitions, on the other side, represent business transactions between parties which are unrelated, under terms established by the market, while each side acts in its own best interest .

In other words, in the case of acquisitions, the takeover involves a direct business transaction between the management of the acquiring firm and the stockholders of the acquired firm . 4. M&A result in anti-competitive effects as a possible consequence. By creating or strengthening dominant market power and by creating control over the industry’s vertical chain – M&A can succeed in distorting market competition. The scope of the essay is to provide a critical review on the EU competition regulation5.

At the level of EU, the European Commission is responsible for the implementation of the regulation. Its powers have still not been used as frequently as the USA. As designed currently the EU regulation and decisions have multiple variations across multiple sectors; particularly the sectors where large companies and extensive cross-border trading and ownership links are predominant. These are counted as the regulation’s key targets6. In the process the essay will look at the most important factor after the anti-competitive issues drive the EU decisions on M&A – the efficiency gains7.

The essay is organized in several sections. First the impact of M&A on the society as a whole is investigated followed by an overview of EU competition law with the EU merger procedures ending with a conclusion and discussion on the findings. 2. MERGERS AND AQUISITIONS AND THE ECONOMIC AND PUBLIC INTEREST (anti-competitive effects and efficiency gains) Although more than 14 drivers of M&As activity have been recognized and defined in the economic research and theory, according to Griffiths and Wall, in most of the cases the theories are highly unpredictable and inconsistent8.

For example, the value discrepancy theory (i.e. buying off a company with a lower value than its genuine potential and actual assets involved), as well as the market power theory (i.e. consolidation due to large market power), are both behavioral models and illustrate specific and exact frameworks in which the companies operate (externally and/or internally). Generalization of these theories is difficult, therefore one may argue that Griffiths and