The first three cases (two other sets of European mergers besides Tetra Laval-Sibel) coming up before the Luxembourg court each resulted in scathing slap-downs of the Competition Commission.
Consider instead the lesser-known case of Tetra Laval, the EU's market leader in paper packaging, and its attempt to buy Sidel, a leading manufacturer of equipment that produces plastic bottles.
But few of today's imaginative ideas would have made it onto drawing boards without cork's competition from screw-top bottle caps, plastic stoppers and aluminum Tetra Paks.