Re-oligopolisation is not a word that trips easily off the tongue - even to a polysyllable-crunching German-speaker like Dieter Wolf.
So when the president of Germany's Federal Cartel Office used the R-word last week to warn of the dangers in the current craze for multinational mega-mergers, and demanded regulation by a supra-national body, his international audience took him very seriously indeed.
He had given a name - albeit an unpronounceable one - to that vague, but rapidly crystallising concern of competition authorities worldwide: that the new breed of giant, multinational corporation will dominate and control markets in a manner few players have had the size or power to contemplate until now. With just a few such monster organisations in every sector, they will be beyond the control of individual governments and out of reach of nationally based regulatory authorities.
Speaking to an international forum of competition watchdogs and trust-busters in Berlin, Mr Wolf warned of the emergence of inter-regional oligopolies on a previously unheard-of scale. These would be powerful enough to make nonsense of previous trade policy successes. He admitted there was little evidence so far that recent mergers had led to abuses, but that could change with time. Trends must be monitored intently. The world must be prepared for the consequences of progressive concentration in every sector. National authorities working alone, within the constraints of their domestic legal systems, were ill-equipped for the job.
Yet not all delegates showed equal enthusiasm for a fully fledged international competition authority.
Mr Wolf's own boss, German economics minister Werner Mueller, said there was no need to panic, even if public concern was understandable. Global markets required global players, he argued.
