Due to regulatory scrutiny, high-profile mergers between oil-service providers and pharmaceutical companies were recently blocked.
In the wake of these two failed megamergers, Marketplace reached out to Fenwick’s antitrust chair Mark Ostrau for insight.
Megamergers are receiving increased attention from regulators for a number of reasons, Ostrau told Marketplace.
“They tend to include market leaders, so there's a natural concern that you might be creating a monopoly or an oligopoly with just two or three big players. And there's more chance that there's lot of competitive overlaps that can't easily be fixed by just divesting a few products,” Ostrau said.
Ostrau pointed out that the merger size alone does not attract regulators’ scrutiny, but it “certainly has an effect.”
The full article is available through the Marketplace website.