Coherence or confusion: the future of the global antitrust conversation.

Antitrust Bulletin, March, 2004 by John H. Shenefield

I. Introduction

Not too long ago, there were so few national antitrust laws in existence that the notion of antitrust coherence among nations would have bordered on the fanciful. The United States had an antitrust law; Germany and Japan each had one, courtesy of American military occupation, but the former was limited and the latter was on paper only. The European Union had one. For the rest, national antitrust laws were largely dead letters and their enforcement, anemic.

Today, the landscape is entirely different. Some 100 countries have antitrust laws, and the leading industrial countries by and large have serious and energetic enforcement programs. Premerger review in several jurisdictions simultaneously is routine for many large transactions, and even...