Business | Size wars

Is big business really getting too big?

In a few sectors, corporate concentration is a problem. In most, it needn’t be

Cartoon of a child holding a dollar sign shaped ballon and big hand holding needle next to it — Image: Vincent Kilbride

Jul 12th 2023

GOVERNMENTS ARE at war with big business. In June Joe Biden, America’s president, spoke for many politicians the world over when he blamed it for greed-fuelled price rises, sluggish wage growth, forgone innovation and fragile supply chains. His trustbusters at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have been going after large deals merely because they are large—or that is how it feels. Courtroom defeats do not dampen the agency’s zeal. The latest came on July 11th, when a judge rejected its request to block Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a developer of video games. The ftc said it would appeal against the ruling. The EU’s competition authorities are making noises about breaking up Google. Last year Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) derailed the $40bn purchase by Nvidia, a semiconductor giant, of Arm, a chip designer.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “How bad is being big?”