Why merger can be a dirty word when it comes to our inflation problem

Nothing excites the business section of this august organ more than news of another merger between two public companies. “Merger” is the polite word for it; usually the more accurate word is “takeover”.

So, is the dominant firm offering a good price for the firm being acquired? And should the shareholders in the dominant firm be pleased or worried about the deal? Will it benefit them, or just the company executives who organised it? A bigger company equals higher salaries and bonuses, no?

Credit: Matt Davidson

The financial press tends to regard takeovers as all good fun. Part of the thrills and spills of living and investing in a capitalist economy. But such mergers change the shape of the economy that provides us with our living. Do they make the economy better or worse?

According to the Albanese government’s Assistant Minister for Competition Dr Andrew Leigh, a former economics professor, some mergers improve the economy, whereas some worsen it.

As he explained in a speech this week, mergers are part of the market mechanism that allows financial capital to go where it’s most needed and will do most good to the consumers, workers and savers who make up an economy.

Most mergers are a healthy way for firms to achieve economies of scale and scope, and to access new resources, technology and expertise, Leigh says.

But mergers can do serious economic harm when firms are motivated by a desire to squeeze competitors out of the market and so capture a larger share of the particular market.

So “the small number of proposed mergers that raise competition concerns warrant close scrutiny” to see whether they should be allowed to proceed, he says.

The point is that, according to economic theory, the main thing ensuring ordinary people benefit from living and working in a capitalist economy is strong competition between the profit-making businesses providing our goods and services, which limits their ability to charge excessive prices and make excessive profits.

Competition obliges businesses to pass on to customers much of the savings they make from using improved technology to increase their economies of scale, while preserving the quality of service provided to their customers.

Similarly, competition between a reasonable number of alternative employers is needed to ensure their workers are fairly paid.

This is why laws controlling mergers are one of the main pillars of policy to keep competition between firms effective, along with prohibitions on the forming of cartels and other collusion between supposedly rival firms, and the misuse of “market power” – the power to keep prices above the competitive level.

Leigh says merger law is unique among those pillars because it’s the preventative medicine of competition law. While the other pillars deal with anticompetitive practices that are already being used, it deals with the likely effect of future anticompetitive actions the merger could make possible.

Fine. Trouble is, reformers have been batting for about 50 years to get effective restrictions on the ability of Australian companies to proceed with mergers designed to limit competition and enjoy excessive pricing power.

Leigh notes that a less-competitive market can add to the cost of doing business, and reduce the incentives and opportunities to invest, grow and innovate. For consumers, a less competitive market leads to higher prices, less choice, and lower growth in wages.

Big companies have resisted previous reforms – sometimes as represented by the (big) Business Council – sometimes, when Labor’s been in power, by big unions in bed with their big employers.

But now the Albanese government is making another attempt to get decent control over mergers that are expected to worsen competition.

And not before time. The challenge in Australia is to name more than a handful of industries not dominated by a few big firms.

Academic research Leigh has been associated with has shown that monopoly power worsens inequality by transferring resources from consumers to shareholders. He found evidence that market concentration – a few firms with a big share of the market – had worsened.

As well, profit margins had worsened and “monopsony hiring power” – few employers in an industry – was a problem in many industries.

After the Albanese government’s election in 2022, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Leigh set up a Competition Taskforce within the Treasury focused on advising the government on actionable reforms to create a more dynamic and productive economy.

The taskforce’s top priority was to reform our merger laws. Consultations with industries said our piecemeal merger process was unfit for a modern economy and lagged best practice in other countries.

We were one of only three developed countries with a system of notifying proposed mergers that was merely voluntary. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) complained about inadequate notification of proposed mergers, insufficient public information about the mergers, “a reactive, adversarial approach from some businesses” and limited opportunity to present evidence of likely economic harm arising from a particular merger.

In April this year, Chalmers and Leigh announced what they said were “the most significant reforms to merger rules in almost 50 years”. They would reduce three ways of reviewing merger proposals to a single, mandatory but streamlined path to approval, run by the ACCC.

For merger proposals above a monetary threshold or market-concentration threshold, this means those which would create, strengthen or entrench substantial market power will be identified and stopped. But those consistent with our national economic interest will be fast-tracked.

Challenges to the commission’s decisions will be the responsibility of an Australian Competition Tribunal, made up of a Federal Court judge, an economist and a business leader.

This should make it easier for the majority of mergers to be approved quickly, so the commission can focus on the minority that are a worry on competition grounds.

It’s the great number of our industries dominated by just a few firms that makes us especially susceptible to the inflation surge we’re still struggling to get back under control.

Ross Gittins is the economics editor.