Does common ownership raise antitrust concerns?
Abstract
Common ownership has raised growing antitrust concerns. We compile a comprehensive dataset of U.S. antitrust litigation cases from the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and consumer-initiated lawsuits to shed light on these concerns. We find no robust relationship between common ownership of firm-pairs and the likelihood of these firms being jointly sued. Furthermore, common ownership is negatively associated with potential channels of collusion, such as interlocking directors and competitor-benchmarked executive pay. Evidence from institutional mergers and S&P 500 additions of rival firms supports our main conclusions. Overall, our results offer little support for the view that common ownership promotes explicit collusion.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Merger and Competition Analysis
Global trade and economics
Digital Platforms and Economics
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of Corporate Finance
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Volume
- 100
- Pages
- 103037–103037
- Publication date
- 19 June 2026
- Language
- EN