The Federal Trade Commission and US Justice Department’s Antitrust Division on Tuesday announced a joint review of federal guidelines for corporate mergers to consider whether they should be updated “to better detect and prevent illegal, anticompetitive deals.”
The announcement comes amid growing concerns about concentration in a range of industries, which some experts worry can reduce competition and consumer choice, and following several decades of less aggressive antitrust enforcement. Merger filings more than doubled from 2020 to 2021, according to the agencies.
The review is meant to consider whether merger guidelines should be modernized in light of technological and economic changes in recent years. The guidelines were last updated more than a decade ago.
“This inquiry comes against the backdrop of a broader reassessment of the effects of mergers across the US economy,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press conference Tuesday. “Evidence suggests that decades of mergers have been a key driver in consolidation across industries, with this latest merger wave threatening to concentrate our markets further. … Industry consolidation and weakened competition have denied Americans of an open economy, with workers, farmers, small businesses and consumers paying the price.”
The agencies will seek public comment on merger guidelines, including on how markets are defined for the purpose of antitrust reviews. They are also seeking information on the “unique characteristics of digital markets” that “often have characteristics like zero-price products, multi-sided markets, and data aggregation that the current guidelines do not address in detail.”
In recent years, the FTC and DOJ have begun to take action on antitrust concerns around the Big Tech industry, efforts that accelerated after President Joe Biden appointed tech critics Khan and DOJ Antitrust Division head Jonathan Kanter to lead the federal government’s top antitrust enforcement agencies. The Justice Department is engaged in an ongoing lawsuit targeting Google’s dominance in search and search advertising. Last week, a judge said the FTC’s lawsuit seeking to break up Meta, Facebook’s parent company, can proceed after the agency updated its complaint.
Following the inquiry, the agencies will release a draft of updated guidelines, with the aim of wrapping up by the end of this year.
