Mergers and acquisitions will continue to face strong headwinds at the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice under new proposed Merger Guidelines released on July 19, 2023. The Proposed Guidelines embody the antitrust agencies’ aggressive posture toward merger enforcement under the Biden administration. This On the Subject highlights the most significant changes in the Proposed Guidelines and what steps companies contemplating mergers and other transactions should take in the face of these changes.
In the first half of 2023, antitrust enforcers remained remarkably busy both in the United States (US) and across the European Union (EU). The US Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) Antitrust Division (Division) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have continued their aggressive and novel effort to drag antitrust enforcement into the labor markets. The DOJ Procurement Collusion Strike Force (PCSF) has pursued its crackdown on antitrust and fraud involving government procurement with a number of recent cases. And DOJ has pushed the boundaries under Section 2 of the Sherman Act—both by revitalizing the criminal provisions of the law and by pursuing “attempts” to monopolize criminally. The European Union has also kept the pressure on those doing business overseas, imposing significant fines in recent matters and upgrading its online leniency program to make it easier for companies to report wrongdoing.
In this installment of Cartel Corner, we examine this continued aggressiveness toward antitrust enforcement. While these government enforcement efforts have not always been successful, they have nonetheless reframed the landscape for many companies and individuals. What was once thought of as a civil antitrust violation at worst—or no violation at all—is now often pursued criminally. And antitrust enforcers are speaking in more strident tones as they attempt to remake, in certain ways, the way companies do business in the United States and abroad.
Whether antitrust enforcers are ultimately successful remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the trend is real, and it is one that all companies should be prepared to address in the weeks and months to come.
On June 29, 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered a preliminary ruling in the Super Bock Bebidas vs. Autoridade da Concorrência case (C-211/22) on the questions referred by the Tribunal da Relaçao de Lisboa (Lisbon Court of Appeal). To some extent, the recent judgement is not particularly noteworthy or innovative, as it mainly applies well-established EU competition law principles prevalent through existing case law. However, the Super Bock case marks a significant step forward by introducing these principles for the first time in the context of vertical price-fixing agreements.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed, for comment, significant changes to the information and documents to be submitted with premerger filings—even in transactions that do not raise significant antitrust issues. The changes proposed may not take effect and may be different when finalized. But if promulgated as proposed, every Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) filing will be more difficult and time-consuming, and transactions that might raise even marginal antitrust issues will require significant up-front work.
