A Study Of The Performance Of Internet Platform Mergers And Acquisitions For Antitrust

In recent years,the increasing trend of mergers and acquisitions in the Internet platform arena has had a serious influence on market rivalry,with large head platform companies,such as Tencent,Alibaba and Baidu,attempting to expand their market size and forming monopolistic positions through M&A.As a new form of economy,the Internet platform is quite different from the traditional industrial-era business model,the traditional antimonopoly law is no longer suitable for the needs of the current and future development,therefore China started to revise the anti-monopoly law.The newly revised anti-monopoly law particularly stresses the increased regulation in the field of platform economy,symbolizing the importance that China pays to the development of platform economy,and also indicating that China will curb the barbaric growth of Internet platform enterprises,and thus protect the fair and just market competition environment.Therefore,this paper mainly considers the motives of M&A of Internet platform enterprises and assesses the impact of the M&A behavior of Internet platform enterprises on the effect of market competition,and takes Tencent’s M&A of China Music Group as an example to make a comprehensive assessment of the M&A performance,which will play an important role for the relevant authorities to strengthen the anti-monopoly of M&A of platform enterprises.However,Internet platform M&A antitrust has faced some challenges so far,and it is difficult to adjust the conventional economic theory to the changes in the current business model.In order to cope with the challenges of the digital economy and to avoid and prohibit monopolistic competition in the platform economy,the General Administration of Market Supervision has added rules to the identification of the platform economy.This paper explores the effect of M&A antitrust from an antitrust perspective,and tries to put forward suggestions for responding to it.The post-event performance assessment of M&A antitrust of Internet platform firms can help strengthen the supervision of Internet platform firms.This paper takes the study of M&A antitrust and the performance of M&A as an starting point,adopts case-based approach,literature research method,event study and factor analysis of principal components to summarize the situation of M&A of Internet platforms in China and sort out the following problems of M&A of Internet platforms: firstly,the challenge of competition damage assessment method,secondly,the disorderly M&A of large Internet platforms,thirdly,the operator’s declaration standard is not adapted to the Internet business model Fourth,the operator’s dominant position in the market is not enough.Causes are mainly manifested in the analysis of economics,operator review standards,and antitrust enforcement.Based on the analysis and performance assessment of the anti-monopoly effect of Tencent’s acquisition of China Music Group,this paper makes the following recommendations: first,the EU’s profitability model test can be borrowed to define the relevant market;second,the introduction of the transaction amount standard in the operator review,which can reflect the financial strength and market influence of the acquirer;third,the improvement of the determination of the dominant position of the operator concentration market,with the help of the traffic share for the dominant Fourth,increase the penalties for illegal implementation of the concentration of operators.This paper conducts a study on Internet platform M&A antitrust and its performance under the viewpoint of monopolistic competition and performance assessment,which is innovative in terms of research perspective,and its findings can provide reference for other Internet M&A antitrust cases.