Time to call in the trust busters?

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Maybe Britain's trust-busters have dug up little dirt because there is little to be found.

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But trust-busters worry mostly about protecting individual consumers rather than large companies, which are the ones most threatened by broker consolidation.

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Even American trust-busters would have a hard time swallowing this idea.

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The law-and-economics framework for analysing mergers, for example, does not obviate the need for trust-busters to make educated guesses about how competition might develop in future.

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Yet heavy intervention seems an unlikely threat, if only because the trust-busters, including Joel Klein, of the Department of Justice, have repeatedly said they do not want such a role.

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Even if trust-busters fail, however, the cartel is under pressure, not just from conflict diamonds, but also from newly discovered deposits mined by companies that do not work with De Beers.

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