Advantageous Symmetric Cross-Ownership

We model an industry where a subset of firms is interlinked via a reciprocal and symmetric share exchange agreement. A merger aiming at acquisition of market power can be reproduced by the same firms under a symmetric cross-ownership scheme. Both concentration and market power indices increase due to cross-ownership. Under linear demand, a non-controlling symmetric cross-ownership scheme is always advantageous to its members if at least 0.58 (1+n) firms in an n-firm industry participate. The threshold drops to (1+n)/2 for relatively low levels of cross-ownership. Cross-ownership schemes require fewer participants than mergers to be advantageous and can always be more profitable than mergers, unless a merger involves more than 88 per cent of industry firms.