Top antitrust official Varney touts accomplishments in final speech

Christine Varney ticked off a list of her accomplishments in her last speech as assistant attorney general of the antitrust division at the Justice Department during an event at the Center for American Progress.

Varney presided over reviews of Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal, Google’s purchase of ITA software and the merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Although she declined to comment on ongoing investigations, when Varney was asked about how her departure might affect the investigation into the proposed AT&T and T-Mobile merger, she said, “I think that we have a terrific team in place that’s very diligent, doing a great job and I don't foresee any change in their ability to conduct the review.” Varney noted that her division often charted a middle ground between blocking mergers outright and not doing anything. Instead, in several instances, Varney’s office allowed companies to merge but only after they agreed to a variety of provisions to ensure fair competition. She pointed to her office’s handling of Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal as a highlight of her tenure. Varney said that the deal between the two media giants would have allowed Comcast “to limit competition by either withholding or raising the price of NBC [Universal] content and effectively stifling new competition in the online video market.” After making it clear to the companies that her office was prepared to take the issue to court, Varney said that Comcast and NBC agreed to a consent decree that preserved competition.

She called for Congress to re-examine the nation's merger review process, in which two agencies share overlapping authority for policing corporate deals. In her most outspoken comments on the issue to date, Christine Varney expressed concern that antitrust regulators at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission may have "substantively different legal standards" when blocking mergers as anticompetitive. "I don't think we want to foster a system where ... the legal review, the result of your merger, depends on which agency it's in front of," said Varney. "I would recommend to the Congress that they start to think about how to rationalize that."