McDermott’s Antitrust M&A Snapshot is a resource for in-house counsel and others who deal with antitrust M&A issues but are not faced with these issues on a daily basis. In each quarterly issue, we will provide concise summaries of Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Justice (DOJ) and European Commission (EC) news and events related to M&A, including significant ongoing investigations, trials and consent orders, as well as analysis on the trends we see developing in the antitrust review process.

Although the antitrust agencies have new leadership after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the end of 2016 continued the agencies’ aggressive enforcement actions. The antitrust agencies closed out 2016 by challenging several notable mergers and acquisitions, with the DOJ in court challenging three different deals simultaneously. Both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and US Department of Justice (DOJ) finalized decisions in several ongoing investigations in a variety of industries before the end of the Obama administration. The regulators approved at least six mergers with consent orders, of which five required significant divestitures. The agencies required a buyer upfront in all five transactions that required significant divestitures. DOJ approved one deal without a consent order in the event management software platform industry, which is notable given pre-election reports speculating DOJ could sue to block the transaction.