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Corporate & Securities Law

Truth on the Market

Academic commentary on law, business, economics and more.

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Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 00:51:38

The Price of Gas in Antlers, OK

Posted on September 30, 2008
From the DOJ: A federal grand jury in Oklahoma returned a one-count indictment today charging Kwik-Chek Food Stores Inc., a Texas-based convenience store company, and one of its agents, Jarrod “Judd” [...]

Antitrust and Health Care

Posted on September 30, 2008
Barak Richman (Duke) and James Blumstein (Vanderbilt) have an interesting exchange at PENNumbra, University of Pennsylvania School of Law’s online forum for debate surrounding scholarship in the U. Penn. L. Rev. Here’s the abstract from Professor Richman’s article: Courts reviewing proposed mergers of nonprofit hospitals have too often abandoned the bedrock principles of antitrust law, failing [...

Financial Crisis Explained

Posted on September 30, 2008
See here (it’s from February, but I hadn’t seen it until it was forwarded to me today so it may be a waste of your time BW).

Who Is Going to Jail For All of This?

Posted on September 30, 2008
David Zaring cuts to the chase.

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A Separate FTC Section 2 Report?

Posted on September 29, 2008
I’ve discussed some problems with the FTC statement in response to DOJ’s release of the Section 2 Report. In particular, I criticized some of the anti-economic rhetoric in the FTC statement. I wrote: What really bothers me is the Commissioners? failure to consider, at least seriously consider, the evidence and engaging in this anti-economic rhetoric all [...

A Open Letter From Steve Horwitz

Posted on September 29, 2008
To his friends on the left on accepting and understanding the role that regulation has played in the current financial mess despite calls to chalk the whole thing up to knee-jerk ideological deregulatory policies. Greg Mankiw also calls out Senator Obama for offering a distorted version of history in the Presidential debate.

Now that the Bailout Has Failed, How About Bebchuk’s Plan?

Posted on September 29, 2008
I’ve avoided saying anything at all about the bailout because (1) I’m not an expert on banking, finance, etc. and (2) events are moving so fast I can’t keep up with the latest proposal. Nonetheless, since the bailout bill has just failed, this might be an opportune time to consider an alternative to the [...

Cartel Enforcement and the Election

Posted on September 29, 2008
From an excellent short article by Dan McInnis (Akin Gump) on the potential impact of the election on cartel policy in Global Competition Policy: Antitrust policy has played little role in the election. Indeed, at least for cartel policy, there may be little to differentiate the candidates...

Questions on the Bailout

Posted on September 29, 2008
From Peter Klein: Over and over during the last week we?ve been told that unless Congress, the Treasury, and the Fed ?take?bold action,? credit markets will freeze, equity values will plummet, small businesses and homeowners will be wiped out, and, ultimately, the entire economy will crash...

The Costs of International Antitrust Enforcement and Superficial Convergence

Posted on September 29, 2008
There is an interesting profile on Intel in the WSJ. While the profile focuses on some of the technological and competitive challenges facing Intel and CEO Paul Otellini, the CEO mentions the proliferation of antitrust laws across the globe, and the uncertainty associated with regulatory costs in such an environment, as one of the major potential impediments facing [...

AIG/NY Fed Credit Agreement

Posted on September 27, 2008
available here. From the 8-K: On September 22, 2008, American International Group, Inc. (?AIG?) entered into an $85 billion revolving credit facility (the ?Credit Facility?) and a Guarantee and Pledge Agreement (the ?Pledge Agreement?) with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (?NY Fed?)...

N-Data Settlement Approved 3-1

Posted on September 26, 2008
The public comment period has closed and the N-Data settlement has been approved by a vote of 3-1 with Chairman Kovacic voting against (his earlier dissent is here). I think is a sleeper candidate for one of the most important antitrust events of the year as it potentially signals a remarkable expansion of the Commission’s [...

How About a Little Personal Responsibility?

Posted on September 25, 2008
I was reading an article last week about the SEC temporary ban on short-sales and came across the following quote: Short-selling can contribute to efficiency while adding liquidity to the markets. But a recent wave of the maneuvers — profiting by selling unowned shares of companies in the anticipation their prices will drop — has been [...

Geradin on Loyalty Rebates

Posted on September 24, 2008
Damien Geradin has posted an interesting paper on “Separating Pro-competitive from Anti-competitive Loyalty Rebates: A Conceptual Framework.” Here’s the (long) abstract: In its submission to the recent OECD Roundtable on Bundled and Loyalty Discounts and Rebates (the “OECD Roundtable on rebates“), Korea observed that “loyalty discounts are getting growing attention both academically and practically” and [...

Antitrust Week in Chicago

Posted on September 18, 2008
Speaking of law and economics in Chicago, its the place to be for antitrust next week. On Thursday, the FTC at 100 series will continue at Northwestern University School of Law where I’ll be on a panel discussing the FTC’s competition mission after lunch along with Thomas Campbell, Randy Picker, and Robert Pratt...

Nothing to See Here, Move Along …

Posted on September 18, 2008
You’ve got questions about Freddie Mac? They’ve got answers. Here’s my favorite: Does Freddie Mac pose financial risk to American taxpayers? No. Many independent, formal studies ? conducted by government agencies and private rating agencies ? confirm that Freddie Mac is adequately capitalized and manages its business risks well...

The Fed’s Bail-out of AIG and Shareholder Equity

Posted on September 18, 2008
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s announcement of an $85 billion bail-out of AIG came as a shock to many of us, and the precise terms of the lending agreement underlying the bail-out are still unclear. In an e-mail to the BIZLAW listserv, Professor Bainbridge rightly queried how AIG could have offered the Fed secured [...

Odd FTC Consent in Vertical Licensing Case

Posted on September 17, 2008
The FTC announced a complaint today challenging Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co.’s proposed acquisition of an exclusive sublicense from Luitpold Pharmaceuticals, who is in turn a wholly owned subsidiary of a Japanese firm Daiichi Sankyo Company...

Bainbridge on Law & Economics at Chicago

Posted on September 17, 2008
Motivated by Justice Scalia’s remark (HT: Brian Leiter) that the University of Chicago Law School is not what it once was and “has lost the niche it once had as a rigorous and conservative law school,” Professor Bainbridge notes that: It?s certainly true that, from the outside, Chicago now looks like your run of the mill [...

An Unsurprising Result

Posted on September 16, 2008
The Irish Competition Authority releases a report offering the stunning finding that ?The retail planning system limits competition among grocery retailers and as a result consumers are not getting the best possible choice or value for money.” HT: Danny Sokol...

Baker on the Dueling Bush Administration Antitrust Agencies

Posted on September 15, 2008
Jonathan Baker (American) has a column at The New Republic focusing on a different aspect of the FTC vs. DOJ scuffles over antitrust policy. Baker claims that the DOJ is engaging in what he describes as “deregulatory radicalism that allows monopolies to spin out of control,” while he is largely supportive of FTC [...

Inter-Agency Scuffling Over Section 2: What Role for Economists and Economics at the FTC and DOJ?

Posted on September 12, 2008
Much has already been written about the strained relationship between the FTC and DOJ in antitrust matters. There is no more entertaining description of these strains than Chairman Kovacic’s description of the sister agencies as “an archipelago of policy makers with very inadequate ferry service between the islands” and ?too many instances when you go [...

Best Paper Title at CELS?

Posted on September 11, 2008
Unfortunately, I’m missing this year’s Conference on Empirical Legal Studies at Cornell. But I spent the morning skimming the program and came across the following from Ilya Beylin & Anup Malani: Finding Love in the Wreckage: Estimating Spousal Altruism with Data on Fatal Car Accidents...

Dr. Miles is Dead. Now What?

Posted on September 11, 2008
As regular readers of this blog will know, I was pretty stoked when the Supreme Court finally overruled its infamous Dr. Miles decision. The Leegin Court?s holding that minimum resale price maintenance (RPM) is not per se illegal constituted a major step toward an economically rational and theoretically coherent approach to vertical restraints...

Teaching Antitrust

Posted on September 07, 2008
I’m two weeks into the semester here at UT, and the antitrust course. I’ve made a few changes to the course this year. Specifically, I’m using the new 2nd edition of the Gavil, Kovacic and Baker. So far so good on that front on adjusting to the new edition...

A High Profile Test Case for the Chinese Antimonopoly Law

Posted on September 05, 2008
Coca-Cola and China’s Huiyuan Juice Group Ltd $2.4 billion deal looks like it is set to be the first major merger test for the China’s new AML. This WSJ story gives some sense of market shares and potential market definition issues: Defining the market could be tricky...

Mississippi Declares Supply, Demand Illegal

Posted on September 04, 2008
Hotel owner to face $1000 fine and up to six months in jail after after enforcement of state price-gouging law (HT: Knowledge Problem). Oh, and the AG would also like the power to declare a state of emergency for the sole purpose of enforcing the price-gouging law in response to some crafty business owners who [...

Data on Congressional Voting Records for Presidential Candidates

Posted on September 03, 2008
I don’t like blogging about politics except when there is some antitrust angle. This, for reasons that are obvious but still disappoint me, doesn’t happen too often (but see here and here). My general disinclination to blog about politics is that it isn’t my area of expertise and I don’t think I [...

Merging to Second Best

Posted on September 03, 2008
Luke Froeb, Mikhael Shor and Steven Tschantz have just posted an interesting looking model of mergers in auction settings where the incumbent firm has an advantage in subsequent auctions. The model captures the intuition that sometimes a mergers creating a “second-best” rival can result in more more aggressive bidding and result in lower prices even [...

George Mason Law Review Antitrust Symposium

Posted on September 03, 2008
The George Mason Law Review 12th Annual Symposium on Antitrust will be held on December 4th at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. This is typically a very well organized and well attended event. This years theme is “Antitrust Policy in the New Administration,” and will feature addresses from Judge Douglas [...

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