Takeovers destroy value and reduce competition.
I'll grant that takeovers often lead to siphoning off value, but destroying value?
As for competition, the Fed is not there to be a substitute for the anti-trust division of the Justice Department.
So even if I accepted the truth of what you think takeovers do, I don't see where it's any concern of the Fed.
The issue is that the takeover results in the acquired company being loaded up with debt to fund the takeover. Interest payments crowd out spending for things like R&D and maintenance, employee retention becomes harder as wages are frozen and benefits are cut.
If you look at a lot of the retail failures in recent years, there was actually not that much "wrong" with the companies' underlying business models. The problem was that they couldn't continue operating under a permanent mountain of debt that wasn't actually being used to grow the business or make it more productive.
