Overlapping Financial Investor Ownership, Market Power, and Antitrust Enforcement: My Qualified Agreement with Professor Elhauge

Authors

Jonathan Baker, American University Washington College of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

Journal

Harvard Law Review Forum

Volume

129

Abstract

As is well known among financial economists but not previously recognized within the antitrust community, large and diversified institutional investors such as BlackRock, Fidelity, State Street, and Vanguard collectively own roughly two-thirds of the shares of publicly traded U.S. firms overall, up from about one-third in 1980. Recent economic research involving airlines and banking raises the possibility that overlapping ownership of horizontal rivals by diversified financial institutions facilitates anticompetitive conduct throughout the economy, and that the problem has been growing for decades, unnoticed until now. This response to an article by Professor Einer Elhauge, explains why it may be more difficult to address overlapping financial investor ownership under the antitrust laws than Elhauge recognizes.

Recommended Citation

Jonathan Baker, Overlapping Financial Investor Ownership, Market Power, and Antitrust Enforcement: My Qualified Agreement with Professor Elhauge, 129 Harvard Law Review Forum (2016).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_lawrev/1125