Knowledge-based startups or small companies’ mergers & acquisitions: an antitrust debate? Recent cases from US, EU and Brazil

Abstract

The emergence of a new techno-economic paradigm mainly based in the ICT technologies naturally have influenced the ongoing antitrust debate. This paper is devoted to answer two questions. First, how the antitrust authorities should consider knowledge-based startups or small companies acquisitions. Second, what are the current institutional challenges in this topic. Despite this discussion is not much explored in the literature, we looked at the antitrust theoretical debate and examined the recent merger cases …