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

The Trump administration teams up with western allies to bar HuaWei and other Chinese tech firms.

Daisy Harvey

2019-02-02 11:36:00 Saturday ET

The Trump administration teams up with western allies to bar HuaWei and other Chinese tech firms.

The Trump administration teams up with western allies to bar HuaWei and other Chinese tech firms from building the 5G high-speed infrastructure due to natio

+See More

Netflix raises its prices by 13% to 18% for U.S. subscribers.

Chanel Holden

2019-01-25 13:34:00 Friday ET

Netflix raises its prices by 13% to 18% for U.S. subscribers.

Netflix raises its prices by 13% to 18% for U.S. subscribers. The immediate stock market price soars 6.5% as a result of this upward price adjustment. The b

+See More

Mike Pompeo switches his critical role from CIA Director to State Secretary in a secret visit to North Korea.

Peter Prince

2018-04-13 14:42:00 Friday ET

Mike Pompeo switches his critical role from CIA Director to State Secretary in a secret visit to North Korea.

Mike Pompeo switches his critical role from CIA Director to State Secretary in a secret visit to North Korea with no regime change as the North Korean dicta

+See More

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announces the monetary policy decision to lower the federal funds rate by a quarter point to 2%-2.25%.

Chanel Holden

2019-09-07 17:37:00 Saturday ET

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announces the monetary policy decision to lower the federal funds rate by a quarter point to 2%-2.25%.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announces the monetary policy decision to lower the federal funds rate by a quarter point to 2%-2.25%. This interest rat

+See More

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms most stock market indexes from 2017 to 2025.

James Campbell

2025-02-02 11:28:00 Sunday ET

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms most stock market indexes from 2017 to 2025.

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms most stock market indexes from 2017 to 2025. Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms the ma

+See More

Bank failure resolution and financial risk management: Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank.

Dan Rochefort

2023-05-27 11:30:00 Saturday ET

Bank failure resolution and financial risk management: Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank.

Bank failure resolution and financial risk management: Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank.   What are the main root cau

+See More