WHEN
ANTITRUST LAW
SHOULD — AND SHOULD NOT —
PREVENT MERGERS on research by
H E R B E R T H OV E N K A M P James G. Dinan University Professor
In a recent issue of the Hastings Law Journal, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Herbert Hovenkamp discussed the use of “incipiency tests” in antitrust law, which may be employed to bar companies’ proposed mergers which have anticompetitive effects that may not readily be remedied after the merger has occurred. In “Prophylactic Merger Policy,” Hovenkamp offers a taxonomy of the limited situations where the government’s proactive prevention of mergers is most appropriate. Hovenkamp is the James G. Dinan University Professor and holds a joint appointment between Penn Law and the Wharton School of Business. He is a widely recognized expert in antitrust law and American legal history.
“An important purpose of antitrust merger law is to arrest certain practices in their ‘incipiency,’ by preventing business firm acquisitions that are likely to facilitate them.”
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