DOJ AND FTC REQUESTED PUBLİC COMMENT ON UPDATE TO MERGER GUİDELİNES
17/02/2022
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division launched a joint public inquiry aimed at strengthening enforcement against illegal mergers. The Authorities considered that many industries across the economy are becoming more concentrated and less competitive due to an ongoing merger surge that has more than doubled merger filings from 2020 to 2021.
The agencies announced the public inquiry to seek comments from the public, including market participants, government entities, economists, attorneys, academics, unions, employees, farmers, workers, businesses, franchisees, and consumers to share evidence, and ideas that may inform revisions to the guidelines. The agencies seek input on such questions as follows:
- Whether the guidelines explain and implement the statutory ban on transactions that “may” substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly, and what harms are contemplated by those standards,
- Whether distinctions between horizontal and vertical transactions reflected in the guidelines should be revisited in light of trends in the modern economy.
- Whether concentration thresholds should be adjusted to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of enforcement on presumptions that certain transactions are anticompetitive, whether alternative metrics or qualitative factors should also trigger presumptions of competitive harm, and evidence regarding the accuracy of such presumptions.
- Potential updates to the guidelines’ market definition analysis to better account for non-price competition
- Potential updates to the guidelines’ discussion of potential and nascent competitors, which may be key sources of innovation and competition.
- How to address the issue of buyer power in more detail in the guidelines
- How to account for key areas of the modern economy like digital markets in the guidelines
The comment period is opened for 60 days and must be received no later than Monday, March 21, 2022.
(DOJ – FTC, 18.01.2022)
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