ABSTRACT
The great increase in mergers in Europe during the 1970s has now made the largest European firms comparable to the largest American ones. In the mid-1980s, the ten largest European firms plus the five largest US ones had total sales approximately equal to the top one hundred Japanese firms. Unlike the US trend the European merger boom was predominantly one of horizontal merger between competing firms in the same industry, thus increasing the concentration of European industry (Locksley and Ward 1979; Hughes 1989).
