Competition Matters

The FTC was created to act as a guardian of fair markets, armed with broad authority to ensure our economy is one in which consumers, workers, and honest businesses can thrive.

Chair Khan is committed to realizing that vision of an agency that takes on problems holistically, rather than from a consumer protection or competition lens alone. This means ensuring that the Commission’s two enforcement bureaus – the Bureau of Competition and the Bureau of Consumer Protection – are working hand-in-hand to root out marketplace abuses.

As the FTC continues to experience a massive surge in planned merger deals, we are looking at every step of the merger filing process to identify ways to streamline and maximize our efficiency. Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (“HSR” or the Act), companies are required to file notice of mergers over a certain size before they can close the deal. This is not an application process – it is for law enforcement purposes.

On January 14, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ordered six insurance companies to provide information that will allow the agency to study the effects of consummated physician group and healthcare facility mergers that occurred from 2015 through 2020.

On February 4, 2021, the Federal Trade Commission, with the support of the Department of Justice, announced the temporary suspension of granting early termination (ET) under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act and its implementing rules (HSR Act).  This decision reflected a need to pause during the transition to a new administration combined with the unprecedented volume of HSR filings (HSR transactions for the month of February hit a

Sometime in the future, when we look back on the year that was 2020, it is likely that we will want to remember the good things that happened. And in the world of FTC antitrust enforcement, a lot of good things happened last year. In fact, any attempt to compile a list of the top 10 couldn’t do justice to the incredible work of Bureau of Competition staff and their unprecedented set of accomplishments in this 12-month span, which I’ve highlighted before.

Next Monday and Tuesday, November 9 and 10, we will be hosting a virtual Question and Answer session to discuss the Commission’s Hart-Scott-Rodino Rulemaking initiative.  On Monday from 1 to 2 pm, we will be discussing the proposed changes in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would, if adopted, require filers to disclose addi

Executives and employees of modern businesses communicate with one another, and with suppliers and customers, in a wide variety of ways. Especially with the current challenges of in-person meetings, electronic exchanges are now the norm for doing business. Emails, memoranda, voicemails, SMS/text messages, instant messages, hard copy notes and collaborative documents are all routinely created and circulated in the ordinary course.  

I am pleased to announce several leadership changes in the Bureau's Mergers I and Mergers IV Divisions.

Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act and Rules, parties cannot use a transaction structure for the purpose of avoiding or delaying their premerger filing obligation.  If they do, the Commission must ignore the structure and review the substance of the transaction as a whole to determine whether an HSR filing is required. Premerger Notification Office (PNO) staff have recently rethought some prior advice, and today PNO is withdrawing a 2003 informal interpretation relating to special dividends.