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The Supreme Court's Renewed Focus On Inefficiently Structured Joint Ventures, Stephen F. Ross

Stephen F Ross

Antitrust courts and commentators have long appreciated that joint ventures among rival firms have the potential to provide benefits to consumers and the economy through synergies and economies of scale, but also raise the potential of lessening competition among the venture principals. The case law and academic literature has often ignored, however, the potential harm to consumers when joint ventures with market power are structured in a manner that gives the principals the ability to direct policy and a strategy in a manner that advances their parochial self-interest, rather than the interests of the venture-as-a-whole. The Supreme Court’s recent decision …