Restructuring firms in the context of crisis: What role for merger policy? (New Frontiers of Antitrust, Paris, 21 February 2014)

INTRODUCTION Anne PERROT Économiste, MAPP, Paris 1. The crisis has raised a series of issues related to the role of competition policy and, more specifically, that of state aids and merger control. 2. This round table will explore in what respect the various issues involved in merger review are (or are not) impacted by a context where firms suffer from a bad economic context. 3. The banking sector is obviously particularly at the core of these questions, due to its “systemic” properties: the risk of default of a given bank could impact the whole banking system, which may in turn have devastating consequences on the whole (real) economy. Therefore, we will have a particular focus on the banking system, in the light of various cases that highlight the specific issues of merger control