11 Buyer Power
From: EU Merger Control: A Legal and Economic Analysis
Ioannis Kokkoris, Howard Shelanski
- Subject(s):
- Merger control — Article 101 TFEU — Buyer power — Market power — Basic principles of competition law — Market definition — Market definition, methodology for determining — Significant market power — Enforcement and procedure — National Competition Authorities (NCAs) — Substantive assessment
11.01 As some of the world’s markets become dominated by a few big companies, a form of antitrust abuse that has started to raise concerns is buyer power. Although antitrust law has long recognized that buyer power creates competitive concerns just as seller power does, the primary focus of antitrust analysis, especially in mergers, has been on the selling side. The issue of buyer power has become more prominent in recent times, not least because buyer power and seller power often appear to go hand-in-hand, such that a dominant market position may serve to provide...
