Recent years have witnessed an increased interest, by competition agencies, in assessing the competitive e¤ects of partial acquisitions. We propose a generalization to a partial horizontal acquisition setting of the two most traditional indicators used to screen unilateral anti-competitive e¤ects: the Hel…ndahl-Hirschman Index and the Gross Upward Price Pressure Index. The proposed generalized indicators can deal with all types of acquisitions that may lessen competition in the industry: acquisitions by owners that are internal to the industry (rival …rms) and engage in cross-ownership, as well as acquisitions by owners that are external to the industry and engage in common-ownership. Furthermore, these indicators can deal with direct and indirect acquisitions, which may or may not correspond to control, and nest full mergers as a special case. We provide an empirical application to several acquisitions in the wet shaving industry. The results seem to suggest that (i) a full merger induces higher unilateral anti-competitive e¤ects than a partial controlling acquisition involving the same …rms, (ii) a partial controlling acquisition induces higher unilateral anti-competitive e¤ects than a partial non-controlling acquisition involving the same …rms and the same …nancial stakes, and (iii) an acquisition by owners that are internal to the industry induces higher unilateral anti-competitive e¤ects than an acquisition (involving the same …rms and the same stakes) by external owners that participate in more than one competitor …rm.
JEL Classi…cation: L13, L41, L66Keywords: Antitrust, Partial Horizontal Acquisitions, Oligopoly, Screening Indicators, HHI, GUPPIWe w o u ld like to th a n k M a ria n a C u n h a , J o ã o G a ta , P e d ro P e re ira , A n a R o d rig u e s, a s w e ll a s nu m e ro u s se m in a rs p a rtic ip a nts a t A u to rid a d e d a C o n c o rrê n c ia a n d U n ive rsid a d e C a tó lic a P o rtu g u e sa , fo r h e lp fu l c o m m e nts a n d su g g e stio n s. A ll re m a in in g e rro rs a re o f c o u rse o u r ow n .
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