IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cepnwp/hal-00143911.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Incentives for Partial Acquisitions and Real Market Concentration

Author

Listed:
  • Patricia Charléty

    (CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord (ancienne affiliation) - UP13 - Université Paris 13 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Marie-Cécile Fagart

    (CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord (ancienne affiliation) - UP13 - Université Paris 13 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Saïd Souam

    (CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord (ancienne affiliation) - UP13 - Université Paris 13 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

We analyze the incentives of a controlling shareholder of a firm to acquire, directly or indirectly through his firm, shares in a competitor. We charaterize the conditions under which these partial acquisitions as well as the equilibrium toehold and its nature: controlling or silent. We find that while this shareholder gains, the acquisition is detrimental to minority shareholders of his firm, or of the target, or even of both. We show that the incentives are enhanced if the dominant shareholder initially holds silent stakes in rivals while controlling interests may discourage them. Moreover, we find that partial acquisitions always lead to a decrease in the joint profit of the two firms involved, and an increase in competitor's profits as the market becomes less competitive.

Suggested Citation

  • Patricia Charléty & Marie-Cécile Fagart & Saïd Souam, 2007. "Incentives for Partial Acquisitions and Real Market Concentration," CEPN Working Papers hal-00143911, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:cepnwp:hal-00143911
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00143911
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-00143911/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barclay, Michael J. & Holderness, Clifford G., 1989. "Private benefits from control of public corporations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 371-395, December.
    2. Singh, Rajdeep, 1998. "Takeover Bidding with Toeholds: The Case of the Owner's Curse," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(4), pages 679-704.
    3. Malueg, David A., 1992. "Collusive behavior and partial ownership of rivals," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 27-34, March.
    4. Jeremy Bulow & Ming Huang & Paul Klemperer, 1999. "Toeholds and Takeovers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 427-454, June.
    5. Flath, David, 1991. "When is it rational for firms to acquire silent interests in rivals?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 573-583, December.
    6. Barclay, Michael J & Holderness, Clifford G, 1991. "Negotiated Block Trades and Corporate Control," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(3), pages 861-878, July.
    7. Marco Becht & Colin Mayer, 2002. "Corporate control in Europe," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 112(4), pages 471-498.
    8. Stephen W. Salant & Sheldon Switzer & Robert J. Reynolds, 1983. "Losses From Horizontal Merger: The Effects of an Exogenous Change in Industry Structure on Cournot-Nash Equilibrium," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(2), pages 185-199.
    9. Fudenberg, Drew & Tirole, Jean, 1984. "The Fat-Cat Effect, the Puppy-Dog Ploy, and the Lean and Hungry Look," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 361-366, May.
    10. Perry, Martin K & Porter, Robert H, 1985. "Oligopoly and the Incentive for Horizontal Merger," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(1), pages 219-227, March.
    11. Eirik S. Amundsen & Lars Bergman, 2002. "Will Cross-Ownership Re-Establish Market Power in the Nordic Power Market?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 73-95.
    12. David Gilo & Yossi Moshe & Yossi Spiegel, 2006. "Partial Cross Ownership and Tacit Collusion," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 81-99, Spring.
    13. Bris, Arturo, 2002. "Toeholds, takeover premium, and the probability of being acquired," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 227-253, July.
    14. Barca, Fabrizio & Becht, Marco (ed.), 2002. "The Control of Corporate Europe," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199257539.
    15. Mike Burkart & Denis Gromb & Fausto Panunzi, 1997. "Large Shareholders, Monitoring, and the Value of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 693-728.
    16. Javier Campos & Gilberto Vega, 2003. "Concentration Measurement Under Cross-ownership: The Case of the Spanish Electricity Sector," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 3(4), pages 313-335, December.
    17. Barclay, Michael J & Holderness, Clifford G, 1992. "The Law and Large-Block Trades," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(2), pages 265-294, October.
    18. Mike Burkart & Denis Gromb & Fausto Panunzi, 2000. "Agency Conflicts in Public and Negotiated Transfers of Corporate Control," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(2), pages 647-677, April.
    19. Gilberto Vega & Javier Campos, 2002. "Concentration measurement under cross-ownership. An application to the Spanish electricity sector," Documentos de trabajo conjunto ULL-ULPGC 2002-06, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas de la ULPGC.
    20. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1981. "The Allocational Role of Takeover Bids in Situations of Asymmetric Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 36(2), pages 253-270, May.
    21. Joseph Farrell & Carl Shapiro, 1990. "Asset Ownership and Market Structure in Oligopoly," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(2), pages 275-292, Summer.
    22. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1986. "Large Shareholders and Corporate Control," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 461-488, June.
    23. Patricia Charlety & Marie-Cécile Fagart & Saïd Souam, 2001. "Prises de participations et expropriation des actionnaires minoritaires," Working Papers 2001-42, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    24. Flath, David, 1989. "Vertical integration by means of shareholding interlocks," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 369-380.
    25. Philip M. Parker & Lars-Hendrik Roller, 1997. "Collusive Conduct in Duopolies: Multimarket Contact and Cross-Ownership in the Mobile Telephone Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(2), pages 304-322, Summer.
    26. David Gilo & Yossi Moshe & Yossi Spiegel, 2006. "Partial cross ownership and tacit collusion," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 81-99, March.
    27. Reitman, David, 1994. "Partial Ownership Arrangements and the Potential for Collusion," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 313-322, September.
    28. Kahan, Marcel, 1993. "Sales of Corporate Control," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 368-379, October.
    29. Sanford J. Grossman & Oliver D. Hart, 1980. "Takeover Bids, the Free-Rider Problem, and the Theory of the Corporation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(1), pages 42-64, Spring.
    30. Dietzenbacher, Erik & Smid, Bert & Volkerink, Bjorn, 2000. "Horizontal integration in the Dutch financial sector," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(8), pages 1223-1242, December.
    31. Wilson A. Alley, 1997. "Partial Ownership Arrangements and Collusion in the Automobile Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 191-205, June.
    32. Raymond Deneckere & Carl Davidson, 1985. "Incentives to Form Coalitions with Bertrand Competition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(4), pages 473-486, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Karle, H. & Klein, T.J. & Stahl, K.O., 2011. "Ownership and Control in a Competitive Industry," Other publications TiSEM 75fbaeb6-c5b2-498b-93b9-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Patricia Charléty & Marie-Cécile Fagart & Saïd Souam, 2017. "Quorum Rules and Shareholder Power," EconomiX Working Papers 2017-35, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    3. Patricia Charléty & Marie-Cécile Fagart & Saïd Souam, 2017. "Quorum Rules and Shareholder Power," Working Papers hal-04141634, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Karle, H. & Klein, T.J. & Stahl, K.O., 2011. "Ownership and Control in a Competitive Industry," Other publications TiSEM 75fbaeb6-c5b2-498b-93b9-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Charléty-Lepers, Patricia & Fagart, Marie-Cécile & Souam, Saïd, 2004. "Real market concentration through partial acquisitions," ESSEC Working Papers DR 04004, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    3. Hongkun Ma & Chenhang Zeng, 2022. "The effects of optimal cross holding in an asymmetric oligopoly," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(4), pages 1053-1066, October.
    4. Amrita Nain & Yan Wang, 2018. "The Product Market Impact of Minority Stake Acquisitions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(2), pages 825-844, February.
    5. Benndorf, Volker & Odenkirchen, Johannes, 2021. "An experiment on partial cross-ownership in oligopolistic markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    6. Shelegia, Sandro & Spiegel, Yossi, 2012. "Bertrand competition when firms hold passive ownership stakes in one another," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 136-138.
    7. Jovanovic, Dragan & Wey, Christian, 2014. "Passive partial ownership, sneaky takeovers, and merger control," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 32-35.
    8. Micola, Augusto Ruperez & Bunn, Derek W., 2008. "Crossholdings, concentration and information in capacity-constrained sealed bid-offer auctions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(3-4), pages 748-766, June.
    9. Zevgolis Nikolaos E. & Fotis Panagiotis N., 2019. "A Rule of Reason Approach for Passive Minority Interests within the European Union," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 15(3), pages 1-41, November.
    10. Goergen, Marc & Manjon, Miguel C. & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Recent developments in German corporate governance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 175-193, September.
    11. Juan Carlos Bárcena‐Ruiz & Amagoia Sagasta, 2021. "Cross‐ownership and corporate social responsibility," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 89(4), pages 367-384, July.
    12. Fanti, Luciano & Buccella, Domenico, 2016. "Passive unilateral cross-ownership and strategic trade policy," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 10, pages 1-22.
    13. Trojanowski, Grzegorz, 2008. "Equity block transfers in transition economies: Evidence from Poland," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 217-238, September.
    14. Foros, Øystein & Jarle Kind, Hans & Shaffer, Greg, 2011. "Mergers and partial ownership," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 916-926.
    15. Dong, Quan & Chang, Yang-Ming, 2020. "Emission taxes vs. environmental standards under partial ownership arrangements," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 250-262.
    16. Yasuhiro Arikawa & Atsushi Kato, 2015. "Cross Shareholding and Initiative Effects," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(2), pages 305-319, February.
    17. Dai, Miao & Benchekroun, Hassan & Long, Ngo Van, 2022. "On the profitability of cross-ownership in Cournot nonrenewable resource oligopolies: Stock size matters," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    18. Koch, Andrew & Panayides, Marios & Thomas, Shawn, 2021. "Common ownership and competition in product markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 109-137.
    19. Luciano Fanti, 2014. "Welfare effects of cross-ownership in a unionised duopoly," ECONOMIA E POLITICA INDUSTRIALE, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2014(2), pages 21-41.
    20. Shekhar, Shiva & Wey, Christian, 2017. "Uncertain merger synergies, passive partial ownership, and merger control," DICE Discussion Papers 260, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    horizontal partial acquisitions; real market concentration; dominant shareholder; minority shareholders; silent interests.; silent interests;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:cepnwp:hal-00143911. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.