Mergers And Acquisitions And Competition Regulation

With the MNEs' (Multinational Enterprises) expanding, the global merger wave has been triggering in those years. The field of mergers and acquisitions continues to experience dramatic growth. Record-breaking mega-mergers have become commonplace in the 1990s. These trends have made an prodigious influence on the world economy. In order to set up the right economic strategy for our country based on the precisely judgement on the new world economy structure and future trends, we should devote to doing further research on this issue.Chapter 1 gives vital definitions of mergers and acquisitions, make a concept description from different angles. Firstly, according to merger objectives' industry, mergers are often categorized as horizontal, vertical, mixed or conglomerate mergers; secondly, according to the cooperation attitude between acquirers and objective companies, mergers are classified as friendly or hostile mergers; thirdly, according to the sources of mergers financing, mergers are labeled as leverage, managerial or combined buy-outs; fourthly, according to payment methods to the objectives, mergers are sorted as cash, stock /asset or credit financed.United States owns the biggest powerful economy strength in the world. The merger history in United States is the representative in the western countries. The social, political and economic background of five merger waves in the United States, the features of each wave, different attitudes of government and typical case analysis in different periods are discussed in the Chapter 2.Chapter 3 gives a systemic summarize on the most popular theory about causes of mergers in the western countries. It's difficult to explain the complexity and change ability of mergers for one kind of economic theory. There are lots of profound social, economic, political reasons when mergers occurred and developed in different regions and periods. Different industries own their different causes of mergers, even the same company owns it's different causes in varied periods. In fact, the procedure of mergers is the synthesize balanced process. Even one certain factor is in the highest fight, but other factors should be considered at the same time. There are lots of theories and hypothesis in this field. This chapter discusses causes of mergers from 9 aspects, such as efficiency theory, information theory, deputized cost theory, market force theory, revenue theory etc.Chapter 4 focuses on the domino effect of mergers. Firms are in pursuit of the maximum profit. The reason of mergers is that firms reckon on it for the maximum profit. Functions of mergers include the effects of economies scale, combination and synergy, resource allocation, transaction cost, science and technology advancement etc. The further understanding in the function of mergers can bring lots of cautions on mergers activities in our country, which exist the blindness of aim and the distortion of objectives. Monopoly is the most important disadvantage of mergers. Government inference should based on the acknowledgment on the malpractices of mergers.Chapter 5 presents the EEC merger control law. The purpose of the EEC merger control law is to protect the right of small and medium firms and anti-monopoly. The EEC competition law enforces strictly controls on consolidation behaviors by which make the market structure change. In the EEC competition law, four elements consist of the anti-competition concentration: (1) two or more previously independent undertakings merge, or one or more persons already controlling at least one undertaking, or one or more undertakings; (2) enforce the concentration action; (3) allconcentration with a community dimension; (4) a concentration incompatible with the common market where it creates or strengthens a dominant position as a result of which effective competition would be significantly impeded in the common market or in a substantial part of it. The whole chapter analyzed in details these anti-competition concentrations in the EEC merger control law.Antitrust laws in the...