Mergers Essay

When consumers decide to purchase a product or service a car, a new refrigerator, or prescription drugs, the goal of the antitrust laws is to make sure their choices are not restricted unreasonably. Consumer choice is a powerful incentive for the sellers of any products to keep their prices low and their quality high. When the antitrust laws are vigorously enforced, businesses must respond to what consumers want. A business that ignores consumer wishes, by refusing either to keep prices competitive or to offer

With the expansion of digital and online marketplaces, the FCC’s responsibility to promote free market principles and business has never been more important. The order goes on to describe how it will use its’ legal authority to promote free market expansion, “We marshal all of these sources of authority toward a common statutorily-supported goal: to protect and promote Internet openness as platform for competition, free expression and innovation; a driver of economic growth; and an engine of the virtuous cycle of broadband deployment” (FCC, 120). By promoting open internet and the virtuous cycle, business and digital marketplaces have a secure and reliable medium to buy and sell goods, and promote business and other start-ups. The commission’s legal authority is derived from section 706 (FCC, 121). The order also aims at modernizing Title II, an act that helps promote investment and business activity (FCC,

It is necessary for a firm to expand in order to gain profits or leverage in a market place. One of the ways firms can do this is by executing a merger. There are two types of mergers, horizontal and vertical mergers. There are many incentives for companies to perform either type of merger; however, both types of mergers will always raise suspicion when being executed because they are usually perceived as anticompetitive. In order to prevent an anticompetitive environment, our government established a federal agency called the Federal Trade Commission. Their job is to review the activity of any given firm and decide whether or not to allow them to continue. Presently, CVS and Etna are currently undergoing a vertical merger to gain profits and

The Federal Trade Commission has taken the first step toward blocking the proposed $6.3 billion merger of Staples and Office Depot, saying the deal would hurt competition in the market for office supplies sold to large corporations. They made the complaint that the merge violated antitrust laws. "The Commission has reason to believe that the proposed merger between Staples and Office Depot is likely to eliminate beneficial competition that large companies rely on to reduce the costs of office supplies," said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. The FTC has blocked the merge of these companies since 1997. The companies have released a joint statement saying that they think the FTC vision of the market is "based on a flawed analysis and misunderstanding

Antitrust act was a constraint to the industry in order to prevent absolute monopoly. Regulating market is a particular challenge in network industries, where mediating vertical interactions across firms, particularly from workload created or essential facilities is important. Emergence of antitrust policy as the primary tool to regulate competition was beginning to have an impact in the early 1900’s. For decades America has been dealing with an infinite number of antitrust practices. One of the most well known was telecommunication network, where ATT was the dominant for decades; the monopoly has caused great harm to many consumers by paying high price for long distance services. Growing up as a child I remember conversation my parents used to have about telephone bill. I was forbid to use the phone every time the monthly bill was over $600. This monopolistic behavior and price control have changed for the better. The vigorous enforcement of the antitrust law has forced the breakoff of ATT’s monopoly to create the baby

In this article, we see a rather obvious case of a duopoly, and after a rough calculation to find the percentage of the market Comcast

As a result, the proposed merger would have posed an unacceptable risk to competition and innovation, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The innovation

Comcast later responded, “In response to questions from commission staff, we explained that running our network code directly on third party devices without our application was not feasible for a variety of reasons.”Comcast then went on to say, “The FCC’s proposed set top box mandate threatens to undermine this highly dynamic marketplace, create substantial costs and consumer harms, and will take years to develop.” You know what really creates substantial costs and harms you, the customer; the bullshit cash grab policies that are currently in

This merger was expected to be scrutinized by both the Department of Justice and the FCC. Many believed this merger would decrease competition and increase prices which will harm consumers, the Department of Justice agreed and so did the FCC. The Department of Justice believed if the two companies if combined would be in an extremely powerful position, providing high-capacity data services to almost half of American households and limiting the choice of those customers. Almost a year after the announcement the deal fell apart, Comcast decided to walk away from the 45.5 billion dollar deal. The attorney General at the time Eric Holder tipped his hat to companies like Netflix who raise concerns about such a merger.

AT&T is a mobile service provider that has been advertising to consumers about their unlimited data plans. However, their claims of unlimited data service have been a false representation of what the data policy actually is. The company does what is called throttling, where they reduce the data speed of their customer once they have used a certain amount. Instead of responding to this crisis with an apology to its customers, AT&T stated they didn’t do anything wrong and justified their actions by saying other companies are doing it as well. These actions are deceiving consumers and affecting the service provider they choose to use, as well as, taking advantage of the money their paying for the service their actually receiving. The Federal

Predatory pricing is a tool that is used to achieve market power. It is the practice of pricing below cost. This can foster market power in three simple ways, by eliminating rivals, by disciplining rivals who refuse to cooperate in keeping prices at monopoly levels, or by depressing the market value of rivals' assets so that a predator can purchase these assets at below market prices. Predatory pricing does not allow the market to work freely. It is a way of controlling the market.

This scope of this project will consist of expanding the network because of the recent merger. We will expand the present network of 25 users to 65 users, in addition to incorporating the latest technology. The project will be completed in sixty calendar days or by 31 December 2015. For this project we have a budget of $100,000 so controlling the scope of the project is important. Control scope is there to ensure that it is only the work identified as being ‘in scope’ that is delivered, and in this way scope creep is avoided. The budget can tend to grow if scope creep is allowed. Scoop creep usually occurs when new features are added to product designs that have already been approved, without providing equivalent increases in budget, time and/or resources. Other causes of scope creep are poor requirements analysis. Sometimes the customers doesn 't always know what they want and can only provide a vague idea. Another area is not involving the users early enough. Thinking you know what the users want or need can be a mistake. It is important to involve them in both the requirements analysis and design phases. The last area we will explore is lack of change control. You can expect there to be a degree of scope creep in most projects, therefore it is important to design a process to manage these changes. A simple process of document, consider, approve and resource can be implemented. Now that we have explored the scope of this project along with analyzing how to

In a time in which the government seems to be attempting to regulate everything in private business. The deregulation of Internet providers comes as a breath of fresh air. Many believe that providers will look into their own best interest, taking advantage of consumers. But their best interests align with the best interests of consumers. By allowing them freedom, the consumer ultimately wins. Companies won’t have to adhere strictly to government guidelines, and will be able to experiment with previously banned ideas.

The General Electric (GE) and Honeywell International (HI) case illustrates the complexities of structuring mergers and acquisitions when the combined firms are capable of exerting market influence that threatens the competitive landscape. While General Electric's CEO, Jack Welch, characterized the deal as, "This is the cleanest deal you'll ever see," European anti-trust regulators were not so inclined to view the transaction as harmless to competition (Elliot, 2001).

Mergers and monopoly through the market economy are highly possible creating opportunities for consumer exploitation through substandard goods and high prices. The government’s role in this case is to oversee the mergers and control the market to obscure monopoly creations. The essence of market economy is to achieve optimal capacity in production an aspect that is likely to miss out where a monopoly exists (Eidenmüller, 2011). The intention of government regulation is to oversee the mergers and safeguard the interests of consumers.