STARTUPS AND YOUNG INNOVATIVE FIRMS MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS: AN ANTITRUST DEBATE? LESSONS FROM THE ICT TECNO-ECONOMIC PARADIGM

Abstract

This paper is devoted to answering two questions. First, as to how the antitrust authorities should consider knowledge-based startups or the acquisition of young innovative firms. Second, what the current institutional challenges in this topic are. We looked at the antitrust theoretical debate and examined two recent merger cases of the ICT industry in the United States and in the European Union in order to extract insights about these questions. In addition, we briefly explored the Brazilian institutional framework to propose an agenda in terms of policies and academic research for this country. We sustain that market shares are not an accurate proxy for market power considering the possibility of being successful in terms of innovation strategies; they can be highly volatile or might not appropriately show the firm's potential in the process of

Bangalore’s IT entrepreneurial ecosystem

“…This situation may result in certain positive outcomes given the global scale of such funds, but it may also generate unfavorable consequences like a process of early foreignization of growing startups and entrepreneurial drain. These consequences were already identified and analyzed in the Latin American case, with both innovation and competition policy implications (GONZALO et al, 2013;PIRES-ALVES;LYRA, 2019). These issues are gaining presence even in official documents (GOVERNMENT OF INDIA, 2012) and should be included in the future policy agenda of the IT EE, considering the Latin American experience.…”

“…Structural framework conditions would affect the depth of financial markets, the existence of "smart capital", and the relative returns of long-term productive investments (versus the short-term speculative ones) affecting the relative potential of this dynamic. Shortcomings in this dynamic may force entrepreneurs to rely on bootstrapping strategies, foreign VCs, the diaspora and/or to sell significant portions of their businesses earlier than desired, in a process of "venture foreignization" and "entrepreneurial drain" (GONZALO et al, 2013;KANTIS, 2018;PIRES-ALVES;LYRA, 2019).…”

Extractivismo de capacidades: el caso del sector de software y servicios informáticos argentino

“…10 No se trata de un fenómeno exclusivo del sector de SSI. La tendencia a la creación de empresas tecnológicas (startups) para ser vendidas es una estrategia de amplia difusión sectorial (Pires-Alves et al, 2019;Gonzalo et al, 2013). sores extranjeros son aquellas que tienen productos desarrollados, modelos de negocios atractivos y/o carteras de clientes de accesos a mercados estratégicos para el desarrollo del negocio.…”

The Indian venture capital emergence, development, and boom: A southern contextualization

“…As discussed for the Latin American case in Gonzalo et al. (2013), Gonzalo (2015), and Pires‐Alves et al (2019), there are potential implications in terms of “foreignization” of the startups and the intellectual property and competition policy issues related to killing acquisitions that could appear if the foreign VC presence is not mediated by a systemic policy approach.…”