Merger to monopsony: Revisiting AT&T's failed bid for T-Mobile

A scant year after the collapse of its ill-fated merger with AT&T, T-Mobile has announced its intentions to acquire MetroPCS. This occasion is as good as any other for promoting my paper on one aspect of the failed AT&T/T-Mobile merger, Merger to Monopsony: AT&T, T-Mobile, and the Clayton Act. I am very grateful to Danny Sokol for promoting Merger to Monopsony in a recent post on the Antitrust and Competition Policy Blog.

Jim Chen, Merger to Monopsony: AT&T, T-Mobile, and the Clayton Act, downloadable at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2130962:

In a pivotal antitrust decision, Cellular South, Inc. v. AT&T Inc., 821 F. Supp. 2d 308 (D.D.C. 2011), the United States District Court for the District of Columbia allowed Sprint and Cellular South to pursue their suits to enjoin AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile. These suits posed a significant barrier to the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. The ability of Sprint and Cellular South to pursue their claims represented a modest but important victory against the domination of the American wireless industry by an emerging AT&T/Verizon duopoly.