Media advisory: Professor can discuss blocked Staples-Office Depot merger

LAWRENCE — Amid antitrust concerns, a federal judge earlier this week blocked a planned merger between office supply rivals Staples Inc. and Office Depot Inc., making it the latest in a string of failed deals involving large, struggling corporations.

A University of Kansas expert on mergers and acquisitions says that while policymakers often have good intentions for putting regulatory policies in place, there are still economic consequences to preventing mergers in the marketplace.

George Bittlingmayer, Wagnon Distinguished Professor of Finance in the School of Business, is available to discuss the failed Staples-Office Depot merger and others this year, including the recent Halliburton-Baker Hughes deal that also fell through. Bittlingmayer's research interests include mergers and acquisitions as well as the effect politics and regulation have on business and financial markets. He served as a visiting economist at the Federal Trade Commission.

He said big-box office-supply retailing is only one example of an industry experiencing the effects of competitive stress and technological change. Mergers are historically a way of dealing with that stress and change, and ultimately deploying assets more efficiently.

"Antitrust policy is a balancing act. You want the government to protect consumers from price hikes, but you also don’t want it to prevent mergers when the alternative to a merger is a slow, painful decline," Bittlingmayer said. "As the number of stressed firms accumulates, the real damage comes from all of the deals that do not happen. Most companies that do not go under ultimately get acquired by another company, and we should think long and hard about whether we want to slow that process down. Historically, very aggressive prohibitions of mergers, as happened in the 1970s, were not good for the economy."

To arrange an interview with Bittlingmayer, contact George Diepenbrock at 785-864-8853 or gdiepenbrock@ku.edu.