Changes in antitrust regulation and merger activity in Russia: Price manipulations and need for additional antitrust scrutiny

Antitrust regulation is constantly evolving that enables the Federal Antitrust Service of Russia to timely respond to new economic and technological changes. The latest amendments to the antitrust law which came into force on September 1, 2023 include changes to the regulation of mergers and acquisitions and add a new criterion for a deal approval. In this study, we evaluate short-term effects of the changes in antitrust merger regulation and identify stealth mergers. We use data from the mergers.ru (Mergers and Acquisitions in Russia) to test hypotheses about possible effects of regulatory changes. We use the McCrary test (manipulation test) to reveal if there is continuity in the distribution of mergers prices and find a persistent discontinuity at the new threshold for deal price (7 billion rubles) both after the adoption of the amendments (from June 27, 2023) and after their implementation (from September 1, 2023). This may indicate the presence of manipulations in deal prices, which in the future can possibly lead to higher prices and distortions in innovation efforts.