1.   Antitrust regulators traditionally consider whether a merger would reduce competition and, as a result, limit customer choices.

2.   A merger would reduce some overlap in coop activities.

3.   A Union Pacific-Santa Fe merger would reduce rail competition in California by cutting the number of railroads from three to two.

4.   But antitrust authorities basically take a snapshot of a horizontal market for a given product and then look at whether a merger would explicitly reduce competition in that market.

5.   But it has looked only at economic issues, chiefly whether mergers would reduce competition.

6.   But opponents told a Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee that the merger would reduce competition, eventually leading to higher prices and diminished service.

7.   Consumer advocates reason that the merger will reduce the number of competitors in the market.

8.   Greenspan said that while the mergers had reduced the overall number of banks nationally, the number competing in any given region remained about the same.

9.   In the U.S., the question is whether a merger will substantially reduce competition.

10.   Now, mergers are reducing pricing pressures and shares trading at levels that are cheap relative to their non-cyclical counterparts.