An Empirical Research on Cross-Border Mergers at EU Level

Abstract

In order to examine the impact of Directive 2005/56/EC—now repealed by Directive 2017/1132/EU—on cross-border mergers (the “Directive”) on the EU internal market and businesses in Europe and in order to draw substantive conclusions as to drivers and obstacles in respect to the Directive or ways how to improve the current legal framework on cross-border mergers, it is important to have a clear picture about the empirical nature of cross-border mergers carried out in the EU. This includes inter alia the overall number of cross-border mergers within the EU or between specific Member States, the type of mergers or the type of businesses involved in such mergers. Such insights are also an important pre-requisite for other aspects related to company mobility. For instance, worker participation in companies merging across borders has been controversial, among other things because of the concern that registration of the merged entity in a Member State with no worker participation requirements could lead to a weakening or circumvention of existing worker rights.

This chapter will focus on research carried out by Thomas Biermeyer as author of the study on the on the application of the cross-border mergers Directive, mandated by the European Commission for the years 2008 to 2012, as well as on research carried out in the context of the project “Cross-border Corporate Mobility in the EU”, led by Thomas Biermeyer together with Marcus Meyer at Maastricht University for data between 2012 and 2017.

This Chapter is a revised version of Biermeyer and Meyer (2018).