COMPETITION • FRENCH LAW • MERGERS
A maverick is a competitive outlier capable of significantly affecting the position of the members of an oligopoly. The maverick is an important driving force of competition. An undertaking can be classified as such when it refuses by its behavior to follow the consensus of the sector and puts pressure on the effective structure of the market. Often these undertakings are small and can expand their sales or production rapidly, or vertically integrated undertakings that can play the role of disrupter. Thus, when the eliminated competitor is a maverick, the merger is more likely to harm competition. On the contrary, the stability of the coordination may be jeopardized by the presence of a maverick that is likely to disturb the market equilibrium.
