NCAA vs. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma: A Win for Antitrust Law and College Football Fans
On December 13, 2024, Judge Robert E. Payne of the Eastern District of Virginia, in a long-running private action that had previously found a consummated merger to be unlawful, overruled defendant’s objections to the required...more
New U.S. merger control filing forms to take effect in February 2025 - Following publication in the Federal Register, the new Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) premerger notification forms will become effective on February 10, 2025....more
In the latest effort to prevent vertical consolidation in the healthcare industry, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) – along with the states of Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey and New York – filed a lawsuit on Nov. 12...more
In prior posts, we discussed the draft, updated merger guidelines that had been issued by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice (sometimes referred to as the “Agencies”) in July of last year. At that...more
In my earlier post in the Antitrust Advocate Blog, I noted recent setbacks that the Federal Trade Commission has experienced with respect to its regulatory authority. I then asked whether the FTC would suffer another...more
Since the announcement of a proposed merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, Inc. (“Activision”) in February 2022, enforcement agencies worldwide have adopted a spectrum of positions in response. The EU Commission...more
On July 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit declined to block the $315 million purchase of Imperial Sugar Company (“Imperial”) by United States Sugar Corporation (“U.S. Sugar”), rejecting the Department...more
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on July 19, 2023, jointly announced the release of proposed Merger Guidelines that would expand significantly the number and types of transactions...more
Aggressive merger enforcement continued through the end of 2022, with the agencies having mixed results in the courts. With several high-profile investigations still pending, the expectation is for aggressive enforcement to...more
2021 has been a busy year for antitrust legislation. On February 4, 2021, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and four other senators introduced the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Act of 2021 (“Klobuchar Bill”)....more
A Florida federal court recently denied summary judgment to an integrated hospital system hoping to exit a multicount antitrust and unfair trade lawsuit. Four days later, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld summary...more
Competitive effects still matter in healthcare mergers, even in the face of a transaction’s claimed improvements in patient outcomes through integrated care and risk-based reimbursement consistent with the goals of the...more