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Sanderson, Margaret --- "Merger to Monopsony in Canada, Europe and the United States: A Selected International Comparison" [2006] ELECD 520; in Marsden, Philip (ed), "Handbook of Research in Trans-Atlantic Antitrust" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Handbook of Research in Trans-Atlantic Antitrust

Editor(s): Marsden, Philip

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845421816

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Merger to Monopsony in Canada, Europe and the United States: A Selected International Comparison

Author(s): Sanderson, Margaret

Number of pages: 31

Extract:

3 Merger to monopsony in Canada, Europe
and the United States: a selected
international comparison
Margaret Sanderson1


Introduction
In this chapter, I discuss how competition agencies in Canada, Europe and
the United States have dealt with mergers that give rise to monopsony (or
oligopsony) power concerns.2 In Canada, several recent mergers involving
purchasers of agricultural products and natural resources have raised con-
cerns about excessive buyer power, notwithstanding a finding that down-
stream markets are competitive.3 Mergers of processors of agricultural
inputs have raised similar concerns in the United States, where some com-
mentators have advocated that different review standards be adopted to
deal with monopsony concerns in these marketplaces.4 In Europe, monop-
sony concerns have been raised one step higher in the chain of distribution
in mergers of large supermarket chains.
While the merger guidelines across Canada, Europe and the United
States are clear in stating the analytical issues involved in assessing whether
a merger results in market power to a single buyer (or set of coordinating
buyers) are no different than if the market power were to arise on the selling
side, a review of the cases refutes this claim. Differences exist across the
jurisdictions in terms of when buyer power concerns in mergers will raise
competition agency scrutiny. In Europe, the Commission's guidelines indi-
cate it will only seek to remedy mergers raising buyer power issues when
final consumers are likely to be affected negatively. As a result, it is not
sufficient to ...