Killers and keepers
What Big Tech buys, and what merger control should do about it. 27 publications, from 2019 to 2026.
All 27 publications
Newest first2026
Not All Network Effects Are Red Flags: A Simple Screen for Digital Vertical Mergers
Johannes Johnen and Shiva Shekhar
This paper proposes a simple yet useful framework for evaluating vertical mergers in digital markets by distinguishing between product-specific and ecosystem-specific network effects.
Keeper Acquisitions: What Big Tech Keeps When It Buys
The “killer acquisition” hypothesis dominates debate on technology mergers, asking whether large firms buy startups to eliminate them. But the more revealing question is what acquirers keep.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Assessing the Draft EU Merger Guidelines
This paper assesses the European Commission’s draft Merger Guidelines against the treatment of efficiencies, the failing firm defence, and the counterfactual in the 2004 Horizontal Merger Guidelines and the 2008 Non-Horizontal…
2025
The U.S. Supreme Court and the Merger Efficiency “Defense”
Firms’ principal motives for merging are not to increase market power, but rather to improve firm outcomes through changes in internal operations or structure.
Brazilian Merger Policy in Digital Markets: What Can We Expect in 2025?
Brazil has engaged in extensive discussions regarding new approaches for reviewing mergers and acquisitions in digital markets. In 2024, the Secretariat for Economic Reforms at the Ministry of Finance (MF) introduced new…
Dynamic Capabilities and EC Merger Control: A Difficult Match?
Svend Albaek and Raphaël De Coninck
There is no doubt that competition authorities in the future will give a higher role to innovation – and dynamic effects in general – in merger control.
Merger Enforcement in the High-Tech Economy: The Role for a Dynamic Capabilities Framework
Scholars, including Teece et al. (1997), Sidak and Teece (2009), Murmann and Vogt (2023), and Petit et al. (2024), have argued that antitrust enforcement makes systematic errors by failing to recognize and evaluate dynamic…
Did Enforcers Make the Right Call When Clearing Google/Doubleclick?
Google’s activities in the Ad Tech Industry have come under intense fire as the company stands accused, in several jurisdictions, of manipulating the sale of online display advertising space.
Dynamic Capabilities Analysis and Merger Control: Is A Long-Delayed Convergence Finally on The Way?
Merger control has been traditionally focused on the impact of the structural changes induced by the mergers examined on the incentives of the merging parties.
2024
Big Tech Acquisitions And The Ghost Products
Over the last two decades, the largest digital platforms have experienced incredible growth, reaching millions of users, developing many new products and technologies, and collecting enormous profits.
New Insights into the Evolution of Judicial Standards in U.S. Merger Cases
Monday-morning assessments of merger trial outcomes are a frequent occurrence. Proponents of a particular merger that gets successfully blocked in court often contend that the ruling reflects a judiciary that has become…
2023
A Bad Merger of Process and Substance: Changing the Merger Guidelines and Premerger Review Form
On June 27, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced proposed changes to Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (“HSR Act”) premerger notification form.
Law over Economics in the 2023 Draft Merger Guidelines
On July 19, the FTC and DOJ released the draft Merger Guidelines for public comment. Among the many headlines is the displacement by case law of formal economic analysis that had characterized former guidelines.
Big Tech Acquisitions and Innovation Incentives
Raphaël De Coninck and Christoph von Muellern
In this note, which partly draws on discussions and papers presented at the inaugural DCI conference, we argue that merger policy in the tech sector must be based on solid empirical evidence.
Big-Tech Acquisitions and Venture Capital Funding for Start-ups
Johannes M. Bauer and Tiago S. Prado
Start-up acquisitions by larger technology firms, including by “big techs” such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, were long regarded as an integral part of innovation in fast-paced, high-technology sectors.
The UK Facebook/Giphy Case: Taking Dynamic Competition Seriously
There are some frequently mentioned statistics about the number of acquisitions carried out by the large digital platforms and, in particular, about the lack of merger control intervention.
Competition law and privacy: extensive data acquisition as the “eye” of the problem
Traditionally, competition law and privacy have been seen as separate. GAFAM companies, however, have blurred the line between privacy and competition law regulation.
2022
The Effect of Venture Funding on Killer Acquisitions
The subject of killer acquisitions is capturing the ever-increasing attention of antitrust scholars and agencies. Several reasons explain this trend.
How Do Vertical Mergers Affect Innovation? Learning from Illumina
Illumina is significant because it illustrates emerging Antitrust law and policy toward vertical mergers. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sought to block Illumina’s proposed acquisition of Grail.
How to make sensible merger policies?
Merger policy is a topic of heated debate. At times, the rhetoric on both sides seems exaggerated. Some claim that, partially due to lax merger policy, industry concentration in the U.S. has dramatically increased, creating…
Mergers in the Digital Economy
For a few years now, legal scholars and policy-makers have been questioning whether existing legal frameworks are fit to address perceived anti-competitive effects of mergers in the digital economy.
Blockchain and merger control
I am delighted to publish a 15-video series dedicated to my book, “Blockchain + Antitrust: The Decentralization formula”. You can access all the chapters over here, and all the video transcripts over here.
2021
2020
2019
Repeal Continental Can
In a world in which competition agencies would always rely on empirical evidence, I would be teaching the following to my students: when agencies investigate potential abuses of dominant positions, they are required to show (1) a…