For the US subsidiaries of merging cement producers HeidelbergCement AG and Italcementi S.p.A., CRA economists supported counsel through the FTC’s Second Request process and developed economic analyses to support the parties’ affirmative arguments that the transaction should not raise competitive effects concerns in certain metropolitan areas. Later in the investigation, the CRA team helped develop arguments in favor of the viability of a proposed divestiture package, which was eventually approved by the FTC as a condition of the merger. Yianis Sarafidis, Andrew Dick, and Jeff Prisbrey co-led CRA’s team which included Paul Labys, Powell Dixon, Jack Anderson, Trevor Graney, and Ioana Tesliuc.
Pivotality: A sound new theory of harm in horizontal mergers?
In its review of the Novelist/Aleris merger, the European Commission relied upon a novel pivotality theory of harm, where pivotality indicates that competitors...