Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Kiplinger
Kiplinger
Business
Matthew Housiaux

Federal Agencies Finalize Antitrust Guidelines: The Kiplinger Letter

Business people shaking hands in conference room.

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.

The agencies notably softened certain provisions from previous drafts, preserving firms’ ability to tout merger benefits and rebut allegations of harm. But the final guidelines maintain their most ambitious changes. Officials hope to build on recent antitrust victories, including a challenge to DNA sequencing giant Illumina’s acquisition of cancer test developer GRAIL— accelerating patient access to a life-saving multi-cancer early-detection test.

Also, a recent analysis suggests that the Biden administration is largely succeeding with traditional antitrust cases but has struggled with more ambitious lawsuits.

This forecast first appeared in The Kiplinger Letter, which has been running since 1923 and is a collection of concise weekly forecasts on business and economic trends, as well as what to expect from Washington, to help you understand what’s coming up to make the most of your investments and your money. Subscribe to The Kiplinger Letter.

Related Content

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.