SEMINAR ON MERGERS: A DISCUSSION OF THE POTENTIAL COMPETITION DOCTRINE AND MERGERS INVOLVING FOREIGN CORPORATIONS

MR. BODNER: The area of mergers and joint ventures is somewhat different from other areas of antitrust law. If you are deeply involved, you probably know the cases very well since there is not that much merger litigation. On the other hand, if you are involved only in a peripheral way, the cases may seem extremely complex in their facts and extremely general in their legal principles. You may at times even wonder whether the legal developments in the merger and joint venture field are relevant to the rest of antitrust practice. I think, however, that even for those of you who are not currently dealing with merger and joint venture problems, it is important to keep up with recent developments in this area. The doctrines that are developed have a way of spilling over into other areas of antitrust. The law with respect to relevant market definition, for example, applies with equal force to cases dealing with monopolies or vertical arrangements. Similarly, the law on market concentration, involving so-called oligopolistic industries, comes up in cases involving Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.