Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission Seek to Strengthen Enforcement Against Illegal Mergers

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched a joint public inquiry aimed at strengthening enforcement against illegal mergers. Recent evidence indicates that many industries across the economy are becoming more concentrated and less competitive, and that these problems are likely to persist or worsen due to an ongoing merger surge that has more than doubled merger filings from 2020 to 2021. To address mounting concerns, the agencies are soliciting public input on ways to modernize federal merger guidelines to better detect and prevent illegal, anti-competitive deals in today’s modern markets. Some of the specific areas of inquiry on which the agencies are seeking public input and information include:

• The purpose and scope of merger review guidelines;
• Presumptions that certain transactions are anti-competitive;
• The use of market definition in analyzing competitive effects;
• Threats to potential and nascent competition;
• The impact of monopsony power, including in labor markets; and
• The unique characteristics of digital markets.