EU merger control and regulation of 'too big to fail banks'

I recently published an article about the possible role of EU merger control regime to regulate ‘too big to fail banks’. Apparently, financial supervision is the optimal solution to regulate too big to fail banks in spite of some problems that may the effectiveness of this strategy. This article, however, deals with the issue whether the EU merger control regime can be successfully employed to regulate too big to fail banks by way of preventing the creation of such large financial players. To this end, the article propounds the idea of a ‘merger control approach’. This is a framework under which the European Commission should integrate the appraisal of competition impact of banking mergers pursuant to EC Regulation 139/2004 with taking into account the systemic role that the merged bank may have and which impact such role may have on competition. In that regard, the article argues that a merger resulting in the creation of a too big to fail bank may restrain competition, though it should be borne in mind that such effects may take place at the end of a causation link and of a time period longer than those normally considered by the Commission when vetting other merger operations.

The article is available at this link.  

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