Un fiscal argentino pidió que 29 exfuncionarios y empresarios declaren ante el juez en la causa en la que se busca determinar si hubo sobreprecios y sobornos en la adjudicación de la construcción de dos plantas potabilizadoras, en el marco de las concesiones otorgadas a la constructora brasileña Odebrecht. La solicitud de citar como investigados […]
A new wave of economic and legal research suggests that common ownership by large institutional investors leads to potential anticompetitive effects. Other scholars and practitioners argue that there is no there… there. In a recent interview, Vanguard founder John Bogle responded to possible antitrust concerns created by index funds in part by saying “People are […]
By Xavier Vives – The growth of institutional investment has been formidable. This rise of diversified institutional investment has raised antitrust concerns, mostly in the U.S. One reason is that the proportion of U.S. public firms in the hands of institutional investors, which at the same time hold large blocks of other firms in the same industry, […]
By José Azar, Martin Schmalz & Isabel Tecu – This article illustrates the extent of present-day common ownership and discusses the economic logic of why common ownership leads to reduced incentives to compete and may cause anticompetitive outcomes. The authors then review some of the empirical evidence to date, discuss critiques of the same and […]
By Marco Claudio Corradi & Anna Tzanaki – This essay aims to disentangle the complex issues surrounding common ownership by institutional investors, and suggest a holistic approach that brings together the corporate with the competition law aspects of the problem. Accordingly, the analysis first sheds light on the corporate governance dimensions. Next, it outlines the theories […]
By John R. Woodbury – The recent findings of leading antitrust authors are certainly intriguing and have spawned a debate on the competitive significance of the actions of institutional investors. There should be little doubt that further research should be pursued by these and other researchers to validate (or not) the anticompetitive effect and the […]
By Einer Elhauge – Horizontal competitors increasingly have the same leading shareholders, bringing on the potential for anticompetitive effects. Those effects could help explain economic puzzles like the use of inefficient methods of executive compensation and the growing gap between corporate profits and investment. Recently, the evidence has gotten even stronger, showing that horizontal shareholding has continued […]
By Carmel Shenkar, Eelke M. Heemskerk & Jan Fichtner – A major shift toward passively managed index funds in recent years has led to the re-concentration of corporate ownership in the hands of just three large asset management firms, the Big Three: BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. We propose that this trend has restructured ownership […]
By Luca Crocco, Tomas Nilsson & Stella Sarma – Private equity plays an important role in all developed economies and has been a significant driver of the latest “merger waves.” This article gives a concise overview of two sets of recurring issues in the merger control practice of the European Commission involving private equity deals: […]
Algorithms seem to be on the tips of many antitrust regulators’ tongues these days… • In 2015, William Baer, then principal deputy associate attorney general at the Department of Justice, stated that “[w]e will not tolerate anti-competitive conduct, whether it occurs in a smoke-filled room or over the internet using complex pricing algorithms.” • At […]