to the merger. We show that a PPO reduces the minimal synergy level necessary to make a merger beneficial for consumers …. It follows that an antitrust authority ignoring existing PPOs when evaluating merger proposals (which reflects the … current EU merger control regime) invites sneaky takeovers: Acquiring firms strategically use PPOs prior to a full merger …

We empirically investigate the sources, magnitude, and timing of synergy realization for 293 M&As by non-serial listed …

acquirer firm to learn the merger synergies with the target firm in advance. The realization of a synergy is uncertain ex ante … initial minority share, becomes an insider, and learns the merger synergy. We show how this feature of PPOs affects a firm …'s takeover strategy and the decision problem of the antitrust authority. We derive implications for a merger control approach to …

-based synergies in horizontal merger activity. We propose a schematic to classify mergers that yields more information on merger types … and merger effects, and that can, moreover, distinguish between mergers characterized largely by collusion-based synergies … encompasses the impact of merger events not only on merging firms – as is custom – but also on non-merging competitor firms (the …