Oblig. disclaimer, IANAL and not a financial advisor either.
> Did you think that companies can't interact if they're not subsidiaries of the same organization?
Of course not :) I however wonder if defending anti-trust from a subsidiary strategy would work — at least in France, I'm pretty sure taking half your execs and hiring them in a subsidiary which you control will NOT get you past anti-trust regulation.
You might say "but it's legal!" and the judge will kindly ask you not to mock the court by disingenuously failing to address the case at hand — are you or are you not effectively in a monopoly, or cartel situation? Legal or not in terms of legal structure doesn't matter because antitrust is 'above' in the hierarchy of norms (so to speak, my law studies are really far away now, and I was more into public than private law).
Case in point though, shareholding is even legally restricted in some sectors (e.g. media, and that was a strong motivation for e.g. Facebook trying not to be filed as a media group, at least in the EU).
I have absolutely no idea how this would fly in the US. I bow to your expertise, here.
A good example, I think, will be the shareholding structure of Libra (if it ever comes to fruition), where many actors essentially hide their participation behind layers of companies, like some onion (there was a good infographic which you might google on the topic). It's legal, technically, but would it stand in front of a supreme court antitrust case?
As far as I know from history, even legal lines tend to become blurry in major antitrust cases because these are, by essence, out-of-bounds of 'normal' operation, they're fringe cases that sometimes requires a new ad hoc law to take where we want to (I seem to remember elements of Teddy Roosevelt's opposition with Rockefeller, details of the Bell system breakup too, but I'm really not sure. Here in the EU, it's really common —all things considered— to just make new law whenever the current letter fails to live up to the desired spirit).
Thank you for the remarks, I'll probably refrain from speaking about antitrust in the US until I have a better understanding of those.