In the United States, with its century-long tradition of antitrust legislation, the situation is similar since the Federal Reserve or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to the banks involved, are responsible for evaluating the anticompetitive effects of mergers. The Department of Justice cooperates with the regulatory authorities and in extreme cases may bring a legal action against an operation.
In Europe, it is BIS Review 99/1998  -5-  worth mentioning the case of the Netherlands, where, in establishing a Competition Authority at the beginning of this year, the law provisionally assigned the protection of competition in the banking and insurance industries to the respective supervisory authorities.