To help you understand what impact the Justice Department and the FTC's new antitrust guidelines will have on mergers and acquisitions and what we expect to happen in the future, our highly experienced Kiplinger Letter team will keep you abreast of the latest developments and forecasts (Get a free issue of The Kiplinger Letter or subscribe). You'll get all the latest news first by subscribing, but we will publish many (but not all) of the forecasts a few days afterward online. Here’s the latest…
Two critical federal agencies have finalized new antitrust guidelines that are expected to have a chilling effect on mergers and acquisitions or, at the very least, expand the transactions subject to regulatory enforcement.
The update from the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the first since 2010. Among the changes are a lower market share for mergers to carry a presumption of harm and trigger action by Uncle Sam and greater scrutiny of vertical mergers — a focus on transactions that would extend or entrench a single firm’s dominance.
