Can Antitrust Prevent Too Big to Fail?

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Today I am in New York to present at a conference at Fordham Law School on New Ideas for Limiting Bank Size- the Murphy Conference on Corporate Law. Most papers are by non-antitrust people who want antitrust to be used as a weapon to prevent firms of a specific size to emerge in the financial institutions sector.  My basic point will be that if people are worried about systemic risk, antitrust is not the proper tool.  If people are worried merely about size, antitrust also is not meant to limit size.  Antitrust cares about competition.  Also, many of the papers seem fixated by market shares.  This is merely a starting off point in antitrust analysis - not the end point.