How Merger Control Rolls: A Response to Caffarra, Crawford and Valletti

In a recent paper, How tech rolls: Potential competition and ‘reverse’ killer acquisitions, Cristina Caffarra, Gregory Crawford and Tommaso Valletti make the case that merger control should introduce presumptions of anticompetitive harm when large tech companies seek to “buy” rather than “build”. Simon Bishop and Stephen Lewis evaluate these arguments. They conclude that the arguments of Caffarra, Crawford and Valletti are weak and unsubstantiated. We should therefore be extremely wary of deviating from the established practice of detailed case-by-case assessments by introducing presumptions into merger control.