Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Pay Now, Merge Later

Metsera

An important problem in mergers and acquisitions is antitrust risk. The most obvious potential buyers of a company are often its competitors, and the bigger the competitor is, the more it might be willing to pay. If Company A has 50% of the market and Company B has 20% and Company C has 10%, Company A will probably be willing to pay more for Company C than Company B will, because having 60% of the market will give it a lot of market power.

But antitrust law works the opposite way: Antitrust regulators tend to prefer deals where the company ...