Fierce Competition Podcast | Private Equity Under the Antitrust Microscope
The Latest on Antitrust Compliance
What the final days of the Biden administration portend for private equity enforcement in Trump 2.0 - During the final days of the Biden administration, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the...more
A suit brought by state attorneys general accusing Google of overseeing a broad scheme of anticompetitive conduct in digital display advertising markets will continue following a Jan. 28, 2025, ruling from the Eastern...more
President-elect Trump will act quickly to replace Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and roll back certain Biden-era antitrust initiatives. The new administration is likely to bring a more favorable merger review...more
Exclusionary conduct has been a key to Visa’s success. The Antitrust Division of the Justice Department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Visa Inc. in the Southern District of New York yesterday for illegal...more
There has been a spate of legislation and lawsuits targeting the use of software that gives visibility to competitors’ prices. This allows firms to adjust their prices, either undercutting the competition or setting a de...more
Following a nine-week bench trial starting in September 2023 and closing arguments in May 2024, District of Columbia district court judge Amit Mehta ruled on August 5, 2024, that Google illegally maintained its monopoly in...more
This week’s decision in United States v. Google represents a significant victory for the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and various state attorneys general, which successfully argued that Google has exercised...more
United States Attorney General Merrick Garland, giving remarks about the lawsuit, highlighted public criticism over Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s “exorbitant fees and technological failures” and stated that this lawsuit is “what...more
On May 23, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) Antitrust Division announced a Request for Information (“RFI”) seeking information from the public to “identify serial acquisitions...more
Expanding the range of ways they can identify and investigate potential competition concerns in healthcare, DOJ, FTC, and HHS recently announced the introduction of HealthyCompetition.gov, a new portal through which the...more
The FTC, U.S. DOJ, and HHS have launched an online portal for the public to report potentially unfair and anticompetitive health care practices to the FTC and the Antitrust Division of the DOJ....more
For the third time in as many months, the U.S. federal antitrust enforcement authorities -- the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice -- have filed a statement of interest in an...more
As part of its whole-of-government effort to enforce the antitrust laws, the Biden administration recently launched a new interagency Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing (Strike Force), which will be co-chaired by the...more
On March 5, the FTC convened a workshop with regulators, academics and stakeholders to discuss the impact of private equity in the healthcare market. The workshop reflects the FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division’s recent focus on...more
On March 5, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (DOJ), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) jointly issued a Request for Information on Consolidation in Health Care...more
A recent government initiative announced on March 5, 2024 signals that more antitrust scrutiny for private equity firms and asset managers is on the horizon. The U.S. antitrust agencies, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”)...more
On December 18, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division (“DOJ”) released final revisions to the Merger Guidelines (the “2023 Merger Guidelines”) that frame the agencies’...more
The third quarter of 2023 was eventful for both domestic and international cartel enforcers. In the United States, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to revamp policies to sharpen its enforcement efforts. On...more
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Sept. 21, 2023, sued a private equity firm in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas over an alleged decade-long "roll-up" strategy to consolidate anesthesiology...more
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) (the “Agencies”) jointly issued a draft update of their Merger Guidelines intended to describe and guide the Agencies’ review of...more
On Tuesday June 6, 2023, the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, and the Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced an agreement to combine PIF’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial...more
In August, we wrote about whether antitrust liability might be in the PGA Tour’s future through a reported DOJ Antitrust Division investigation about the PGA Tour’s actions relating to LIV Golf and about PGA Tour bylaws...more
A bipartisan coalition of eight AGs and the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against Google LLC alleging anticompetitive, monopolistic conduct regarding digital advertising technologies in violation of the...more
Antitrust is in the news. Old cartoons showing octopus-monopolist tentacles destroying Washington are no longer just for American history textbooks. Lina Khan—who rose to prominence with an article attacking the Chicago...more
A healthcare staffing firm in Nevada just pled guilty to conspiring with a competitor to fix wages for school nurses and agreeing not to solicit each other’s workers – the nation’s first-ever successful criminal prosecution...more