banks have a substantial and persistent negative impact on merging banks' revenues. We refer to merger related negative … customers and the temporary distraction of management from day-to-day operations by effecting the merger. For our analyses we … involved in 212 mergers between 1994 and 2006. We find that the negative impact of a merger on net operating revenues amounts …

order to reduce her agency costs. Whenever this incentive effect dominates the well-known direct synergy effect, synergies … actually reduce consumer surplus which opposes the use of an efficiency defense in merger control. …

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 …