It may be illegal for institutional investors to buy-and-hold large equity stakes in a less competitive industry with high market concentration.

Olivia London

2017-11-27 07:39:00 Mon ET

Is it anti-competitive and illegal for passive indexers and mutual funds to place large stock bets in specific industries with high market concentration? Harvard law professor Einer Elhauge suggests that it is illegal for a passive institutional investor to buy-and-hold large equity stakes in a less competitive industry with high concentration, such as the U.S. airlines industry with 4 or fewer key players. In contrast, passive indexers would be safe from antitrust concerns if most other institutional investors stop buying multiple public companies in a specific sector with high market concentration.

The basic rationale relates to the fact that if institutional investors such as index funds and mutual funds hold shares of multiple companies in a specific industry, these oligopolistic firms would tend to compete less vigorously with one another. When senior executives make business decisions in the best interests of their institutional investors, this logic suggests less fierce product market competition and greater price discrimination for consumers in addition to the private benefits of portfolio diversification. The net result would be more stable share prices and more favorable rents and returns to these passive indexers and mutual funds.

Although key critics may disagree with this novel thesis, it is quite controversial to judge whether it is legal for institutional investors to retain major equity stakes in oligopolistic firms in a given industry with high market concentration.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Microsoft (U.S. stock symbol: $MSFT).

Monica McNeil

2025-09-16 09:27:00 Tuesday ET

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Microsoft (U.S. stock symbol: $MSFT).

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fund

+See More

Senior business leaders can learn much from the lean production system with iterative continuous improvements at Toyota.

Daisy Harvey

2020-07-19 09:25:00 Sunday ET

Senior business leaders can learn much from the lean production system with iterative continuous improvements at Toyota.

Senior business leaders can learn much from the lean production system with iterative continuous improvements at Toyota. Takehiko Harada (2015)  

+See More

President Trump promises a great trade deal with China as Americans mull over mid-term elections.

Laura Hermes

2018-11-13 12:30:00 Tuesday ET

President Trump promises a great trade deal with China as Americans mull over mid-term elections.

President Trump promises a great trade deal with China as Americans mull over mid-term elections. President Trump wants to reach a trade accord with Chinese

+See More

Federal Reserve's QE exit strategy makes sense ahead of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's stepdown in 2018.

Chanel Holden

2017-03-27 06:33:00 Monday ET

Federal Reserve's QE exit strategy makes sense ahead of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's stepdown in 2018.

Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius says the Federal Reserve's QE exit strategy makes sense ahead of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's stepdown in 2018

+See More

Broadcom announces its strategic plans to move its legal headquarters from Singapore to America.

Daphne Basel

2017-11-03 06:41:00 Friday ET

Broadcom announces its strategic plans to move its legal headquarters from Singapore to America.

Broadcom, a one-time division of Hewlett-Packard and now a semiconductor maker whose chips help power iPhone X, has announced its strategic plans to move it

+See More

Apple shakes up senior leadership to initiate a new transition from iPhone revenue reliance to media and software services.

John Fourier

2019-02-21 12:37:00 Thursday ET

Apple shakes up senior leadership to initiate a new transition from iPhone revenue reliance to media and software services.

Apple shakes up senior leadership to initiate a new transition from iPhone revenue reliance to media and software services. These changes include the key pr

+See More