Purposes and tools of the market for corporate control

The theme of the market for corporate control features among the most important issues of corporate governance and financial markets. This forces to reflect on the effects produced by regulations on control changes. In this regard, this paper aims to contribute to the establishment of certain methodological rules in order to develop an analytical model that can serve as a tool for an ex-ante evaluation of a regulation of the market for corporate control and may illustrate the impact of a given takeover regulation on the policy purposes it aims to achieve. To this end, the paper intends to identify (i) the traditional policy purposes of a takeover regulation, (ii) the traditional regulatory tools that are available for market regulators, (iii) the impact of each regulatory tool on each policy purpose, (iv) the impact of a given combination of regulatory tools on the overall policy purposes and, ultimately, (v) the ex-ante rating that can be given to a specific takeover regulation.