Everybody merges with somebody—The wave of M&As in the energy industry and the EU merger policy

Almost all the main European energy companies have recently shown an unprecedented activism on financial markets and the wave of M&As seems far from being over. A sound understanding of the wave can provide hints on the future developments of the market and the effects on merger policy. These operations are explained by several reasons, ranging from the pan-European players’ strategy to the creation of national champions, from the objective to merge gas and electricity businesses (convergence mergers) to the aim of re-building a vertical dimension of the industry after liberalization.In face of such a broad range of motivations, merger policy has to be applied consistently to each case and case-law is developing to better address energy-specific issues. Still, the characteristics of the energy industry may allow for more economic insight and a longer-term perspective in merger cases, in order to guarantee that energy and merger policy are leading to the same objectives, through different tools.