Title: Acquisitions, market share and interest groups

Authors: Amir Shoham; Miki Malul; Assaf Meydani

Addresses: School of Business Administration, The College of Management, Rishon Le Zion, Israel. ' Department of Public Policy and Administration, Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. ' School of Government and Society, The Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo, Tel-Aviv, Israel

Abstract: Gaining greater market share and using it to maximise profits is a winning strategy for companies. One of the best ways to gain greater market share is to acquire another firm in the same industry (horizontal acquisition). In many cases, this type of merger and acquisition is problematic because of antitrust laws. In this paper we present a political economy model that shows how a firm could legally bypass antitrust issues by using interest groups. We illustrate the model using a case study from the retail food industry in Israel.

Keywords: mergers and acquisitions; M&As; interest groups; antitrust laws; market share; political economy model; food retailing; food industry.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2012.048157

European Journal of International Management, 2012 Vol.6 No.4, pp.442 - 457

Published online: 22 Nov 2014 *

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