Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

[Early Bird] The Texas Common Ownership Litigation: Sustainability, Competition, And The Boundaries Of Asset Manager Capitalism, Federico Ghezzi

Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies

This article analyzes the recent attempt by the Texas Attorney General to invoke the common ownership doctrine as a new antitrust weapon against large institutional investors allegedly engaged in coordinated ESG strategies. The case represents a peculiar reversal of the traditional logic of the theory: rather than being used to constrain horizontal shareholdings that may reduce competition, common ownership is deployed here to challenge collective action aimed at promoting environmental sustainability. The paper situates this development within the broader debate on the anticompetitive effects of horizontal ownership, briefly examining the economic assumptions underlying the theory, the limits of its empirical …

Control Capture And Competition, D. Daniel Sokol, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Essay identifies an emerging problem in antitrust law and policy, particularly in the technology industry. Antitrust doctrine has historically revolved around internal control of firm, i.e., equity acquisition. It focuses on the capture of internal control. Mergers and acquisitions trigger regulatory review. In these deals, the locus of anticompetitive behavior lies in ownership and internal governance. However, one can capture control through various ways. An emerging problem in antitrust law is external exertion of control through contract. Competition can be stifled, and thus price, non-price, and innovation factors can be controlled or manipulated through the levers of control existing …

Data Advantage And Merger Review: Can Entrenchment Theory Reform Antitrust Enforcement?, Shin-Ru Cheng

Seattle University Law Review

A merger involving giant digital companies is likely to dampen competition, as it allows those companies to combine and control data access, enabling them to entrench their dominant positions in relevant markets and extend those positions into related markets. While competition law in many jurisdictions aims to prohibit mergers that may substantially lessen competition or create a monopoly, arguably the review of digital mergers is failing because antitrust agencies lack an effective approach to identify data-generated anticompetitive harms. This Article demonstrates that entrenchment theory, recently reintroduced in the 2023 U.S. Merger Guidelines, would help reform the process of antitrust enforcement. …

The Last Great American Dynasties: Lessons In Monopoly Prevention From Mergers In Entertainment And Aviation, Margaret Bibby

Journal of Legislation

On November 1, 2022, Taylor Swift first announced The Eras Tour. The pent-up demand for a Taylor Swift concert was massive: she had not toured since the Reputation Stadium Tour in 2018, the Lover Fest Tour set for 2020 was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and her streaming numbers and popularity were higher than ever. The Eras Tour announcement stated that Ticketmaster would be the sole ticketing platform, and 3.5 million fans, known as “Swifties,” registered for a chance to purchase tickets. When presale opened on November 15, 2022, disaster struck for millions of fans. Swifties were met with …

The Healing Power Of Antitrust, Theodosia Stavroulaki

Northwestern University Law Review

Millions of Americans live in hospital deserts—communities where people lack geographic access to hospitals and primary care physicians. People living in these deserts often miss doctor appointments, delay necessary care, and stop adhering to their treatment. In this way, hospital deserts exacerbate the health disparities plaguing America. This Article demonstrates that hospital deserts are not inevitable but the result of several business strategies—including noncompete agreements and merging with competitors—and antitrust enforcers’ unwillingness to recognize these harmful practices as antitrust violations. To cure the issue of hospital deserts, this Article makes three proposals. First, antitrust enforcers and the courts should expand …

Why We Need A Merger Cap: An Antitrust Lesson From General Electric, Carl T. Bogus

Journal of Legislation

This Article makes a modest proposal from a radical perspective. The proposal is this: Once a firm reaches a certain size, it should be prohibited from growing larger through mergers or acquisitions. The radical perspective is that antitrust law should be concerned with corporate size. It was a century ago that Louis D. Brandeis coined the term “curse of bigness,” and his concern about the social and political consequences of corporate size has long since fallen out of favor. Today, the consensus view is that antitrust should be concerned exclusively with economics. Current doctrine allows corporations to merge, provided only …

Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (Pty) Ltd V. Competition Commission And Another [2024] Zacc 3, Dunia P. Zongwe, Adolf N. Gariseb

SAIPAR Case Review

This article examines the South African Constitutional Court's decision on the public interest considerations in merger control, specifically concerning employment effects. The case involved Coca-Cola's retrenchments post-merger and the Competition Commission's notice of apparent breach. The Court's ruling clarifies the review standards for regulatory enforcement of merger conditions and the causal link required between a merger and subsequent employment decisions. The commentary highlights the paradox in South Africa's competition law, emphasising employment protection, though well-intentioned, may constrain economic flexibility. It argues that this employment-centric approach can lead to inefficiencies, diminish consumer welfare, and obscure market competitiveness as a public interest.

Textualism As An Ally Of Antitrust Enforcement: Examples From Merger And Monopolization Law, Robert H. Lande

Utah Law Review

This Article will first briefly present an overview of the textualist method of statutory interpretation. It will then briefly engage in a textualist analysis of important portions of two antitrust statutes: Section 2 of the Sherman Act and Section 7 of the Clayton Act. At least in these areas, textualist analysis should, if anything, help re-invigorate antitrust enforcement.

Antitrust For Dominant Digital Platforms: An Alternative To The Monopoly Power Standard To Restore Competition, Jordan Ramsey

Senior Honors Theses

Antitrust law is meant to promote competition by prohibiting anticompetitive business practices such as mergers and acquisitions as well as exclusionary conduct. Judicial interpretation of antitrust law has allowed dominant digital platforms to undertake anticompetitive actions without prosecution. The Sherman Antitrust Act should be amended to remove the monopoly power standard that allows firms to engage in anticompetitive conduct as long as the conduct does not create or uphold monopoly power. The amendment would make anticompetitive conduct illegal regardless of monopoly power, as long as six proof requirements are met. This would result in lessened market concentration, which would benefit …

Merger Enforcement Statistics: 2001-2020, Logan Billman, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article summarizes merger enforcement data for the period between 2001 and 2020, using a database created by the authors. The database lists the identity and outcome of every transaction that received a second request during this 20-year period. The database also lists the identity and outcome of every challenge to an already-consummated merger during the period. To our knowledge, it is the only complete database for the listing and outcomes of all such transactions. The goal of creating the database is to provide further information on merger enforcement, which hopefully can inform policy and spur additional analysis. We describe …

Hospital Mergers: The Symptoms Of Anticompetitive Consolidation & A Routine Checkup On The Horizontal Merger Guidelines, Stefan Rao Kostas

University of Miami Business Law Review

In 2021, President Biden issued an executive order that addressed the negative implications of market concentration within the healthcare industry. Specifically, President Biden called for the revision of the Horizontal and Vertical Merger Guidelines to enact antitrust safeguards that limit unchecked hospital mergers and promote competition. This Article delves into the role of the healthcare sector in the U.S. economy and how the current state of hospital mergers limits competition and, thus, the quality of care available to patients. Further, this Article studies U.S. federal regulations, case law, and merger retrospectives to uncover pitfalls within the current Horizontal Merger Guidelines. …

Now Streaming: How Streaming Services Are Following In The Antitrust Footsteps Of Hollywood’S Golden Age, Megan Elizabeth Norris

University of Miami Business Law Review

The entertainment industry is undergoing quite the transformation following the recent termination of the Paramount Consent Decrees, which effectively regulated the industry to prevent monopolization and promote competition for almost a century. The industry now faces a drastic surge in the utilization of streaming services and a new wave of antitrust issues.

“With great power comes great responsibility;” however, the dominant streaming companies in the industry have raised suspicion about emerging anticompetitive concerns. While long overdue, the termination of the Paramount Consent Decrees leaves a gaping hole in antitrust policy regarding the nuanced business practice of streaming platforms. Existing antitrust …

Why Do Corporations Merge And Why Should Law Care?, Chris Sagers

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Mergers and acquisitions are extraordinarily prevalent in the United States, generating massive expenditures every year. However, a serious empirical puzzle lies at the heart of all that activity. That empirical phenomenon's most remarkable feature by far is that even though it is well established in an extensive literature and implies far-reaching policy consequences, American law ignores it entirely.

Generations of researchers have failed to find evidence that merger and acquisition activity generates any lasting benefits for the combining firms' owners or anyone else. No one seriously doubts that efficiencies of scale or technological integration are real or that acquisitions sometimes …

Fixing "Litigating The Fix", Steven C. Salop, Jennifer E. Sturiale

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Merging firms have increasingly been asking trial courts to adjudicate their merger “as remedied” by a voluntary “fix.” These are remedies that have been rejected by (or never proposed to) the agency. This procedure is known as Litigating-the-Fix” (“LTF”). This article proposes a judicial procedure for managing cases in which the merging parties attempt to LTF. Our recommendations flow from a decision theory approach informed by the relevant LTF case law, the merger enforcement record, the language and goals of Section 7, and an economic analysis of the incentives of the parties and agencies created by LTF. Our recommendation addresses …

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (Spacs) And The Sec, Neal Newman, Lawrence J. Trautman

Faculty Scholarship

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are simply enterprises that raise money from the public with the intention of purchasing an existing business and becoming publicly traded in the securities markets. If the SPAC is successful in raising money and the acquisition takes place, the target company takes the SPAC’s place on a stock exchange in a transaction that resembles a public offering. Also known as “blank-check” or “reverse merger” companies, this process avoids many of the pitfalls of a traditional initial public offering.

During late 2020 and 2021 an unprecedented surge in the popularity and issuance of Special Purpose Acquisition …

Anticompetitive Merger Review, Samuel N. Weinstein

Articles

U.S. antitrust law empowers enforcers to review pending mergers that might undermine competition. But there is growing evidence that the merger-review regime is failing to perform its core procompetitive function. Industry concentration and the power of dominant firms are increasing across key sectors of the economy. In response, progressive advocates of more aggressive antitrust interventions have critiqued the substantive merger-review standard, arguing that it is too friendly to merging firms. This Article traces the problem to a different source: the merger-review process itself. The growing length of reviews, the competitive restrictions merger agreements place on acquisition targets during review, and …

Anticompetitive Merger Review, Samuel N. Weinstein

Georgia Law Review

U.S. antitrust law empowers enforcers to review pending mergers that might undermine competition. But there is growing evidence that the merger-review regime is failing to perform its core procompetitive function. Industry concentration and the power of dominant firms are increasing across key sectors of the economy. In response, progressive advocates of more aggressive antitrust interventions have critiqued the substantive merger-review standard, arguing that it is too friendly to merging firms. This Article traces the problem to a different source: the merger-review process itself. The growing length of reviews, the competitive restrictions merger agreements place on acquisition targets during review, and …

A Suggested Revision Of The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines (July 2021), Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The DOJ/ FTC Vertical Merger Guidelines (VMGs) were adopted by the FTC in June 2020 by a party-line 3-2 party line over the dissent of the Acting Chair. One might expect that the VMGs will be withdrawn and/or revised, now that there is a Democratic majority. Revision is appropriate because the VMGs are both incomplete and overly permissible. This Suggested Revision can aid that process.

Potential Competition And Antitrust Analysis: Monopoly Profits Exceed Duopoly Profits, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This short note prepared for an OECD meeting in June 2021 examines several antitrust issues involving analysis of potential competition. While the analysis is not new, it is still useful to collect them together in a unified fashion to show how they are related. In this regard, all the analysis and conclusions flow from the overarching (and obvious) points that exclusionary conduct and agreements that maintain monopoly power very often harm consumers, and that monopoly profits typically exceed the combined duopoly profits earned by the dominant firm and the entrant, if there is successful entry. While this is not inevitably …

Leaving Judicial Review With The Judiciary: The Misplaced Role Of Agency Deference In Tunney Act Public Interest Review, Alexandra P. Clark

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Note explores the Tunney Act’s mechanism for judicial review of consent decrees negotiated by the U.S. Department of Justice and merging parties to remedy alleged antitrust issues. The Tunney Act requires that the reviewing court only approve a consent decree if it is “in the public interest.” This Note argues, however, that courts have improperly circumscribed their review by affording too much deference to the Department of Justice when reviewing these consent decrees. This deference subverts Congress’s intent in imposing judicial review and allows the government and merging parties the opportunity to skirt meaningful judicial review. As such, this …

Dominant Digital Platforms: Is Antitrust Up To The Task?, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It has been one hundred years since the end of the Progressive Era and twenty years since the Microsoft settlement. This twenty-year period has seen the rise of the Internet and a new set of dominant platforms, as well as increased consolidation in the brick-and-mortar world. Antitrust has become more permissive. This Essay examines both issues: (i) the potential legal difficulties in reining in exclusionary conduct by dominant platforms; and (ii) merger under-enforcement. This Essay argues that it is necessary to strengthen antitrust enforcement. Consolidation through mergers and exclusionary conduct by dominant firms can harm consumers and workers and reduce …

The Political Face Of Antitrust, Spencer Weber Waller

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The last twenty years have brought antitrust back to the fore as a political issue of greater salience. Several booms and busts in the economy have highlighted the issue of corporate power in the economy and the political system. The growing influence and aggressiveness of the European Union and other jurisdictions' competition laws have highlighted the relative retreat in the United States. Political movements in the United States have brought issues of corporate power and its abuse back into the public limelight and with them a greater political salience for antitrust in the election cycle of 2020.

Consumer Welfare & The Rule Of Law: The Case Against The New Populist Antitrust Movement, Elyse Dorsey, Geoffrey A. Manne, Jan M. Rybnicek, Kristian Stout, Joshua D. Wright

Pepperdine Law Review

Populist antitrust notions suddenly are fashionable again. At their core is the view that antitrust law is responsible for a myriad of purported socio-political problems plaguing society today, including but not limited to rising income inequality, declining wages, and increasing economic and political concentration. Seizing on Americans’ fears about changes to the modern US economy, proponents of populist antitrust policies assert the need to fundamentally reshape how we apply our nation’s competition laws in order to implement a variety of prescriptions necessary to remedy these perceived social ills. The proposals are varied and expansive but have the unifying theme of …

Can Covid-19 Get Congress To Finally Strengthen U.S. Antitrust Law?, Robert H. Lande, Sandeep Vaheesan

All Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic could cause Congress to strengthen our merger laws. The authors of this short article strongly urge Congress to do this, but to do this in a manner that ignores 5 myths that underpin current merger policy:

Myth 1: Mergers Eliminate Wasteful Redundancies and Produce More Efficient Businesses
Myth 2: Current Merger Enforcement Protects Consumers
Myth 3: Merger Remedies Preserve Competition
Myth 4: The Current Merger Review System Offers Transparency and Guidance to Businesses and the Public
Myth 5: Corporations Need Mergers to Grow

Submission Of Robert H. Lande To House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Investigation Of Digital Platforms, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee asked me to submit suggestions concerning the adequacy of existing antitrust laws, enforcement policies, and enforcement levels insofar as they impact the state of competition in the digital marketplace. My submission recommends the following nine reforms:

1. A textualist analysis of the Sherman Act shows that Section 2 actually is a no-fault monopolization statute. At a minimum Congress should enact a strong presumption that every firm with a 67% market share has violated Section 2. This would move the Sherman Act an important step in the right direction, the direction Congress intended in 1890. My …

Antitrust's "Curse Of Bigness" Problem, D. Daniel Sokol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Tim Wu’s most recent book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the Gilded Age, is an attempt to reframe contemporary antitrust debates by returning antitrust to its more populist roots. Given the global implications of his ideas and policy proposals (including breakup of tech platforms) for many of the large corporations that he takes on, The Curse of Bigness offers profound insights for how society and business should be organized. The first part of this Review summarizes Wu’s major claims. It then highlights some of his critiques as to “bigness,” the multiple goals of antitrust, and the missed opportunities as …

Five Principles For Vertical Merger Enforcement Policy, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop, Fiona M. Scott Morton, Nancy Rose

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

There seems to be consensus that the Department of Justice’s 1984 Vertical Merger Guidelines do not reflect either modern theoretical and empirical economic analysis or current agency enforcement policy. Yet widely divergent views of preferred enforcement policies have been expressed among agency enforcers and commentators. Based on our review of the relevant economic literature and our experience analyzing vertical mergers, we recommend that the enforcement agencies adopt five principles: (i) The agencies should consider and investigate the full range of potential anticompetitive harms when evaluating vertical mergers; (ii) The agencies should decline to presume that vertical mergers benefit competition on …

Attention Market. The Concept And Challenges In A Merger Assessment, Krzysztof Kanton, Jarosław Łukawski, Szymon Murek

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

The article focuses on the issue of ‘attention’ paid by consumers to internet and mobile apps content, which from the economic perspective is a resource that falls short. The authors analyze attention as a commodity and present the characteristics of the markets on which it is traded. The publication indicates the challenges faced by competition authorities in assessing concentrations between entities active on the attention market – the so-called attention brokers. In the latter part of the article, the authors analyze the methodology used by competition authorities to assess concentrations between the biggest modern attention brokers. Conclusions and postulates regarding …

Welcome And Introductory Remarks, Jonathan Baker

Presentations

Video link: https://vimeo.com/352303633 Audio link: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/audio-video/audio/economics-big-data-privacy-competition-introduction The Federal Trade Commission held the sixth session in its Hearings initiative, with two and a half days of sessions on November 6 – 8, 2018, at American University Washington College of Law, in Washington, D.C. The hearings examined the role that data play in competition and innovation and will also consider the antitrust analysis of mergers and firm conduct where data is a key asset or product. The Commission invited public comment on these issues, including the questions listed below. Comments were due January 7, 2019. If any entity has provided funding for …

The At&T/Time Warner Merger: How Judge Leon Garbled Professor Nash, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The US District Court in the AT&T/Time Warner vertical merger case has issued its opinion permitting the merger. At of this writing in August 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has appealed to the DC Circuit and filed its brief, as have several Amici. I was disappointed that the DOJ was unable to prove its case to the satisfaction of Judge Leon, the trial judge. Notwithstanding the court’s confidence that the merger is procompetitive, I remain concerned that it will have anti- competitive effects, both on its own and following the subsequent vertical mergers in the TV industry, which this …