Word: mergers
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Will this merger tend to create a monopoly or will it further competition? That simple question can often lead to a bewilderingly complex discussion among economists and antitrust lawyers about what exactly constitutes a market. Whether the product in question is shoes or steel, it is first necessary to size up the market before deciding whether or not a merger or acquisition endangers competition...
Last week the Justice Department took an important step toward clearing up the confusion. In the first major revision of antitrust guidelines since 1968, Attorney General William French Smith released a 44-page document designed to help businessmen determine whether a merger or takeover effort is likely to be challenged by the Government...
...only to have Washington veto it as anticompetitive. Last year Mobil Corp. announced plans to spend an estimated $6.5 billion in what eventually turned out to be a futile struggle to acquire Marathon Oil Co. The takeover was blocked in federal court because it was decided that such a merger would have an adverse effect on competition in gasoline retailing in the Midwest...
...biggest single change in the new guidelines deals with the way markets are to be measured and how the concentration of a market is judged. Says Lawrence J. White, director of the economic policy office of the Justice Department: "Our concern here is with mergers that would tend to have an anticompetitive effect. If the effect is not significant, the merger would not fall within the boundaries of our interest...
Last week bank regulators concluded a merger between The New York Bank for Savings (assets: $3.4 billion) and the Buffalo Savings Bank (assets: $5.6 billion). The Buffalo bank had already picked up two other failing savings banks since the start of December, and is now the largest mutual savings bank...