A recent problematic merger the U.S. and the EU faced in 2009 was the one between US enterprise software company Oracle Corporation and US hardware and software vendor Sun Microsystems Inc. This case, very similar in rationale to the Boeing one, lets us understand the global burden (that comes together with the benefits) of mergers. Which, in fact, easily cross borders, affecting economies beyond their own country of incorporation even when the merger takes place between companies located entirely within a national market and incorporated under the same laws. Because a particular antitrust law applies when a merger has effects on the market that the antitrust law wants to protect, domestic mergers of multi-national corporations are likely to …show more content…
Horizontal mergers are mergers of competitors, whereas vertical mergers refer to mergers of firms not operating in the same industry. Horizontal mergers are particularly threatening to business relations, as they oblige one competitor, the one that gets absorbed by the other entity, to leave the market. This situation irremediably leads to deprivation of rivalry and therefore to a remarkable increase in prices. Vertical mergers, instead, are mergers between two companies producing different goods or services for one specific finished product, while conglomerates are neither horizontal nor vertical ones; the latter are not as problematic for competition as the horizontal are. They could be, however, when the merger allows a firm that is already dominant in one market to extend its market power and increase it in magnitude terms, from one market to the other, thus shutting out rivals. The Department Of Justice, which had cleared the merger without remedy, did not share the European concerns, declaring that the merger should have been able to bring overall economic benefits that would balance out the possible disadvantages. Oracle commented pointing out an important concept: “It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open