Private equity investments
FTC's merger remedies study
A CFIUS Roundup: Polaris Financial
For companies in the energy and chemical sectors, the potential for antitrust scrutiny is an ever-present concern. The next round of enforcement inquiries is never further away than the next jump in commodity prices or the...more
The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division ("DOJ") recently resolved a criminal case with Teva Pharmaceuticals and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals via deferred prosecution agreements ("DPAs"), which include a novel remedy for...more
The Biden Administration's aggressive antitrust enforcers have trained their sights on private equity companies. They have signaled through enforcement activities, formal policy statements and informal interviews and speeches...more
In 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order directing antitrust enforcers to make sure that health care would be an area of emphasis for antitrust enforcement, and in 2022 they did. Federal regulators brought several...more
Takeaways - With increasingly aggressive antitrust and foreign investment reviews, directors need to be fully informed about the risks of deals from the beginning of negotiations. Boards should insist that management and its...more
Earlier this year, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who leads the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division, announced that the Antitrust Division would eschew settlements in merger challenges in...more
In line with overall M&A activity, US PE dealmaking in H1 lagged behind 2021 in terms of both value and volume. Total deal value of US$415 billion during the first half of the year represents a 28 percent fall...more
In an unprecedented move, the Fourth Circuit in Steves and Sons Inc. v. JELD-WEN Inc. recently affirmed an order requiring a company to unwind the acquisition of competitor business in connection with an antitrust action...more
On February 18, the Fourth Circuit affirmed a district court decision ordering a divestiture in a private merger challenge. Although the FTC and DOJ have successfully challenged a few closed transactions, the Jeld-Wen...more
On February 18, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the divestiture order issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in a private merger challenge brought by...more
Divestiture has long been considered an appropriate and effective remedy for anticompetitive horizontal mergers. The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), as reflected in the Statement of the Bureau of Competition entitled...more
On September 3, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division released a revised Merger Remedies Manual. This revised manual is the culmination of a review by the Antitrust Division of its entire approach to...more
On September 3, 2020, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division (the DOJ) issued its new Merger Remedies Manual (the Manual), which provides the framework the DOJ will utilize going forward to implement relief in mergers...more
The US Department of Justice Antitrust Division issued a new Merger Remedies Manual on September 3 clarifying the analytical framework the Trump administration’s DOJ is using to evaluate remedies that may address competitive...more
The U.S. Department of Justice's ("DOJ") new remedies guide reinforces its strong preferences for structural divestitures and upfront buyers to resolve merger investigations. Last week, the DOJ released a new "Merger...more
The United States Department of Justice released its revised Merger Remedies Manual on September 3, 2020, providing “Antitrust Division attorneys and economists with a framework for fashioning and implementing appropriate...more
What happened? On September 3, 2020, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) issued a revised Merger Remedies Manual, which sets forth the Division’s framework for implementing remedies to resolve antitrust concerns in merger...more
On September 3, 2020, the DOJ’s Antitrust Division released its Merger Remedies Manual. The manual provides important guidance on what DOJ considers to be adequate solutions to addressing competitive issues in M&A deals...more
The Department of Justice Antitrust Division recently issued a modernized Merger Remedies Manual, last updated in 2011. The Manual provides an overview of DOJ’s key considerations in crafting a remedy when the Antitrust...more
On Thursday, September 3, 2020, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division issued a revised Merger Remedies Manual (the “Manual”), which outlines the agency’s policies regarding merger remedies in transactions that raise...more
Recent enforcement actions by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC or Commission) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) demonstrate the agencies’ continued close scrutiny of merging parties’ compliance with divestiture orders....more
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently extracted a $3.5 million civil penalty from two companies involved in a gas station merger. The FTC asserts the companies violated their settlement agreement with the government,...more
DOJ Antitrust Division successfully uses private-style arbitration for first time to block a merger, and force a divestiture as a condition to closing.1 DOJ’s novel use of arbitration to resolve liability in a merger case has...more
Schick, the shaving product company, recently announced it was abandoning its proposed $1.4 billion acquisition of rival startup Harry’s Razors. The announcement followed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) threat to...more
On February 4, 2020, Judge Catherine C. Blake of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed certain claims in a putative class action asserting claims under Section 10(b) of the Securities...more