The second event in the Austrian Hub’s event series welcomed Tomaso Duso (German Institute for Economic Research) who gave a lecture on mergers and merger control for big tech firms in digital markets. He focused on corporate acquisitions and mergers of GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) between 2008 and 2018 and illustrated the low level of control by antitrust authorities with these examples. Duso then presented the consequences of mergers for markets and drew attention to the difficulties of analysing such mergers due to the lack of available data.

The presentation was followed by a lively discussion about the possibilities for regulation and its impact on innovation.

The evening lecture was moderated by Susanne Augenhofer (University of Innsbruck; Co-Chair of the ELI Austrian Hub).

The next evening lecture in the event series will be held on 19 May 2021 at 18:00 (CET) and address the topic of ‘Essential Platforms’. Please kindly register for the event by sending an email to evening-lectures-unternehmensrecht@uibk.ac.at by 17 May 2021.