Re-evaluating Minority Shareholding in Competition Law Against the Background of Horizontal Shareholding by Investors: Lessons Drawn From Fintech and E-Commerce Startups in Asia

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The research achievements are twofold. First, the empirical research has shown that venture capitalists have intervened often in the investees' corporate strategies. This has been most obvious in the case of Ola and Uber. Being investor in both firms, Softbank has been urging Ola to merge with Uber. Softbank also tried to engineer a merger between Flipkart and Snapdeal. There is also information that it was Softbank pushing for the merger between Uber and Grab in South-East Asia. These engineered mergers beg the question whether the concept of killer acquisitions should not be reconsidered towards acquisitions to kill competition by a horizontal shareholder or common owner. Second, the theoretical research has focused on the theory of "quiet life" to explain the reason why horizontal shareholding or common ownership could raise prices or limit product choice. The interesting part of this theory is that it has also been used to explain weaknesses within the keiretsu structure, despite the keiretsu being about cross-ownership. The paradox is that to tackle the quiet life, corporate law reforms have been introduced and these in turn led to the creation of common ownership. This triggers the question on the appropriateness of corporate law to tackle negative outcomes of common ownership.