M1069: Worldcom/Mci

Nowadays high profile merger cases are becoming quite important and are taken as milestones of legal systems that produce the needed juridical backbone of the evolution of the market regulation. Additionally such cases are equally important for the progress of the economic theory in the domain of competition analysis and policies. This study will give outlook of the decisions made by the European Commission, as well as, the US Department of Justice in the merger case of two telecommunication corporations- WorldCom and MCI. This case was one of the most important cases that determined the future development of the telecommunication and Internet industry worldwide. The main point of the case analysis is to consider the competitive effects produced by such possible merger and the possible solutions in case of anticompetitive outcomes. The methodology used while writing the essay is based on two major parts: I) analytical part that takes most of the analyses and II) theoretical part. The first part is comprised of the analyses of the US Department of Justice and especially Federal Communications Commission that has the authority for such cases, as well as, the profound opinion and conclusions of the European Commission (DG Competition) of one questionable segment of the telecommunications market, the Internet market, that creates anticompetitive effects. The second part will give the predominant theoretical concepts used by the antitrust authorities.