Antitrust Laws: Relevance, Existence & Acceptance

The global commercial marketplace has become increasingly competitive today. Firms increasingly resort to new measures to improve their market presence as well as market share. In order to do that, firms may go in for internal as well as external growth measures. External growth requires taking over other firms involving all kinds of corporate restructuring. It is this feature that attracts the antitrust laws of any nation. Different nations have their own antitrust laws which are different in their application as well as approach. Antitrust laws became necessary as trade began to be monopolized by a few firms. There were efforts to control the markets by controlling prices and putting restrictions on effective values of trade. There were efforts to control the supply of the product as well as price. There were a few companies controlling the entire industry and small competitors were left with little or no choice in the market, i.e., either to be dictated by the big players or exit the market. Therefore, in order to protect the small players or competitors the antitrust laws came into existence. Antitrust laws sought to achieve price neutrality through competition. The focus of antitrust laws is to help promote competition by outlawing unfair methods of competition. The present paper looks at the antitrust laws of the US, UK, EU, Korea, China and India in terms of their implementation and application to business corporations across the globe. It attempts to answer the question whether antitrust laws have been able to curb the monopolistic tendencies of traders on business organizations.