Non-Horizontal Mergers
25 October 2006
By Dr. Mark Williams et al.
While a broad consensus has developed around the appropriate assessment methodology for horizontal mergers, the competitive evaluation of non-horizontal mergers continues to give rise to large controversy and lively debate among academics, practitioners, and regulators alike. Although the European Commission (EC) issued its Horizontal Merger Guidelines in 2004, the EC recently expressed reluctance to publish accompanying Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines, which were intended to provide greater enforcement transparency and set out a detailed and coherent framework on how the EC would analyze such mergers.
This article from The European Antitrust Review 2007, a Global Competition Review special report, explains how the complexity of non-horizontal mergers necessitates further debate before such guidelines could be of practical assistance. Even though the economics of industrial organization, based on models of game theory, has advanced significantly in the last few decades, the authors note that there are still many questions and issues on which economists have not reached consensus.
This article first appeared in the 2007 edition of The European Antitrust Review, a Global Competition Review special report. For more information, please visit www.GlobalCompetitionReview.com.
