Antitrust authorities search public documents to discover anticompetitive mergers. Thus, investor disclosures may alert them to deals that would otherwise escape scrutiny, creating disincentives for managers to divulge transactions. We study this behavior in publicly traded US companies. First,...

Agencies and legislators have raised concerns that acquisitions backed by private equity (PE) threaten competition, but few, if any, have offered explanations as to why they pose a unique threat. In this article, we argue that PE-backed acquisitions may avoid antitrust enforcement because they...

Antitrust authorities search public documents to discover anticompetitive mergers. Thus, investor disclosures may alert them to deals that would otherwise escape scrutiny, creating disincentives for managers to divulge transactions. We study this behavior in publicly traded US companies. First,...