Antitrust review approved a merger that rendered the recording industry highly concentrated

Evidence

In 2012, the minimally competitive recording and publishing industries were concentrated even further when Citigroup, having recently taken control of EMI from Terra Firma after it failed to make payments on its debt, sold EMI for parts. … During the Universal-EMI antitrust hearings, an attorney estimated that the combined entity would control 42 percent of American recorded-music revenue, transforming the market from “moderately concentrated” to “highly concentrated” as defined by the Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued jointly by the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission . Using 2011’s charts, UMG would have owned more than half of the titles on the Billboard Hot 100. Nevertheless, the merger was approved—and the diversity of major companies in the recording industry has dwindled from six in the late 1990s to just three multinational corporations today. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 197

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in private equity rollups (Terra Firma’s failed EMI acquisition → Citigroup foreclosure → break-up sale) as a financial-instrument case study.