The Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ) was active in 2019. At the beginning of 2019, the DOJ was preparing for trial in six matters and had 91 pending grand jury investigations. Throughout 2019, the DOJ made public several new investigations, including in the commercial flooring industry, online auctions for surplus government equipment, the insulation installation industry and suspension assemblies used in hard disk drives. The DOJ also announced developments in other ongoing investigations.

In April 2019, the DOJ held a public roundtable discussion on the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement & Reform Act (ACPERA). ACPERA, which is due to sunset in June 2020, reduces the civil damages exposure of companies and individuals who are granted leniency under the DOJ’s Leniency Program for cooperating in investigations into cartel and other anticompetitive conduct. A series of panel discussions allowed judges, lawyers, economists, academics and other stakeholders to weigh in on how the law can be improved. The DOJ was particularly interested in the public’s views on whether ACPERA has properly incentivized the self-reporting of criminal conduct and whether there are issues that have impeded the law’s intended effect...