The Prohibition of the Proposed Springer-ProSiebenSat.1-Merger: How much Economics in German Merger Control?



Budzinski/Wacker: Springer-ProSiebenSat.1-Merger

ductions are neglected. In summary, the Bundeskartellamt (2006: 66) cannot identify
any anticompetitive horizontal effects in these markets as a consequence of the pro-
posed concentration. Thus, the prohibition of the merger rests on cross-market (con-
glomerate) effects.

2.2 The Economics of Conglomerate Mergers

Essentially, the proposed merger between Springer and ProSiebenSat.1 is character-
ised as being a conglomerate merger with the main relevant markets being TV adver-
tising (ProSiebenSat.1) and over-the-counter newspapers (Springer) (
Bundeskar-
tellamt
2006: 23). According to the state-of-the-art of competition economics, con-
glomerate mergers are generally held to be less dangerous to competition than vertical
and, particularly, horizontal ones. Moreover, conglomerate mergers are often believed
to involve efficiency gains that generally exceed merely negligible competition ef-
fects (
Bishop et al. 2005: 73-104). Therefore, since rational enterprises decide to en-
gage in a conglomerate merger only if they expect efficiencies and since considerable
anticompetitive effects are unlikely, competition authorities on the European level are
required to prove adverse effects particularly diligent and precise in order to justify
antitrust action against a conglomerate merger.6

However, from an economic perspective, this assessment - in its generality - merely
holds for
pure conglomerate mergers where the products of the merging companies
are independent from each other, i.e. they do not stand in a horizontal or vertical rela-
tion with each other (
Church 2004: 3). Things change if conglomerate mergers in
neighbouring markets
are concerned (Church 2004: 2-3). This refers to the recently
frequent phenomenon of mergers between companies whose products do not fall into
the same relevant market, but the different relevant markets are somewhat (comple-
mentary or substitutive) interrelated - though beneath the threshold to constitute a
common relevant market. In Tetra Laval-Sidel, for instance, markets for carton bever-
age packaging and PET beverage packaging did not belong to the same relevant mar-
ket according to standard SSNIP-styled analysis. However, they do not represent
completely independent markets, like the markets for cars and refrigerators in the
1980s Daimler-Benz-AEG-merger. Similarly, the markets for aircraft engines and
avionics in GE-Honeywell represent such neighbouring markets (while Tetra is about
substitutive relation, GE is about complementary relation). Springer-ProSiebenSat.1
also belongs into the category of conglomerate mergers in neighbouring markets since
TV and newspapers are not completely independent from each other. Therefore, we
briefly review the economics of such types of conglomerate mergers in this section.

See for instance the recent CFI rulings in Tetra/Laval Sidel and General Electric/Honeywell (Tem-
ple Lang
2003; Grant/Neven 2005; Howarth 2005; Baxter/Dethmers/Dodoo 2006).



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