Does common ownership raise antitrust concerns?

Huaizhou Li; Leo Liu; Ronald W. Masulis; Jason Zein

doi:10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2026.103037

Does common ownership raise antitrust concerns?

Huaizhou Li¹; Leo Liu²; Ronald W. Masulis^3,4,5,6; Jason Zein⁶

¹ Dartmouth College · ² University of Technology Sydney · ³ National University of Singapore · ⁴ UNSW Sydney · ⁵ European Corporate Governance Institute · ⁶ Research Network (United States)

Journal of Corporate Finance 2026 open access

Common ownership has raised growing antitrust concerns. We compile a comprehensive dataset of U.S. antitrust litigation cases from the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and consumer-initiated lawsuits to shed light on these concerns. We find no robust relationship between common ownership of firm-pairs and the likelihood of these firms being jointly sued. Furthermore, common ownership is negatively associated with potential channels of collusion, such as interlocking directors and competitor-benchmarked executive pay. Evidence from institutional mergers and S&P 500 additions of rival firms supports our main conclusions. Overall, our results offer little support for the view that common ownership promotes explicit collusion.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2026.103037
Volume: 100
Pages: 103037
Language: en
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