Bilal Sayyed, a McDermott partner and former official at the Federal Trade Commission, has prepared a thoughtful series of recommendations for actions which the new administration’s FTC might take. His paper considers options which the new administration may take based on prior precedents.
Read the full report here.
On October 31, 2016, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit handed another important victory to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the State of Illinois in a hospital merger case in Chicago, Illinois. This decision follows closely on the heels of the FTC’s victory earlier this year in FTC v. Penn State Hershey before the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and, like that prior case, is a strong endorsement for the FTC’s analytical approach to hospital mergers. (more…)
UNITED STATES:
Continuing an active first half of 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and US Department of Justice (DOJ) have challenged several large mergers and acquisitions. In fact, trials for the two national health insurer deals are slated to begin Q4 of 2016 in Washington, DC, where the agencies have had success in obtaining preliminary injunctions this year. Adding to the regulators’ successes in Q3 was a victory for the FTC on appeal in the Penn State Hershey Medical Center/PinnacleHealth System transaction, in which the Third Circuit overturned the district court’s formulation of the geographic market. Indeed, with another appeal in a hospital merger outstanding in the Seventh Circuit, Health Care M&A is an active sector to monitor.
In addition to the agencies’ operations, the upcoming US presidential election has also propelled antitrust policy into a national discussion. For the first time in a few decades, antitrust has appeared on the Democratic Party’s platform, and Hillary Clinton has also issued a statement promising to strengthen antitrust enforcement if elected president.
EUROPEAN UNION:
The July to September period has seen 87 merger control notifications, the vast majority being candidate cases for simplified procedure. There were also eight clearance decisions, five of which were Phase I cases with remedies—in each case, structural remedies were preferred by the European Commission (EC).
Antitrust intervention seems to have been focused more on the telecoms and pharmaceutical sectors, with divestitures being offered in every telecom and pharma Phase I and Phase II clearance decision since July.
Read the full article here.
On October 20, 2016, the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued joint Antitrust Guidance to Human Resource (HR) Professionals (the Guidance) involved in hiring and compensation decisions. The agencies issued the guidance to educate HR professionals about how the antitrust laws apply in the employment context.
Read the full article here.
On October 6, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its report on patent assertion entity (PAE) activity. The report is the result of research that began in September 2014 to address a gap in the agency’s understanding of PAEs, how they operate and how policies can be developed to reduce nuisance litigation. The study focused on PAE practices, including acquisition, litigation and licensing. The FTC recommends that policymakers address asymmetries in PAE litigation through various procedural and substantive reforms.
Read the full article here.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently reversed its position on how to calculate the size-of-transaction for HSR purposes in connection with leveraged buyouts (LBOs). This change in position may result in more reportable transactions.
As detailed here, the FTC’s position, effective immediately, is that any new debt used to finance an LBO transaction, counts toward the size of transaction. Previously, whether or not new debt used to finance an LBO transaction was included in the size of transaction turned on whether the buyer or the target company incurred, provided, or guaranteed the debt.
This does not change the treatment of payment of third-party debt out of transaction consideration:
In pharmaceutical transactions involving generic products, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has typically focused on narrow antitrust theories of harm and applied a narrow product market analysis often limited to a treatment for a particular indication (and sometimes to a specific mechanism of action). In these transactions, the FTC has consistently required fixes for generic overlaps when the transaction (1) reduces the number of significant generic competitors in a particular product market to three or fewer or (2) involves the combination of a branded pharmaceutical product with a “first-to-file” generic for the same product for which there are no other generics yet on the market. Using this narrow methodology, pharmaceutical transactions involving generics that required a fix could move through the FTC review process very quickly and generally achieve clearance in approximately six months from filing.
While antitrust policy and enforcement has not received much attention from Donald Trump on the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has made a few notable statements regarding antitrust law that provide hints as to potential antitrust enforcement priorities for a Trump administration. Mr. Trump’s history as both a plaintiff and defendant in antitrust litigation is also notable and unprecedented.
In his 2011 book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again, Mr. Trump addressed the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) specifically in the context of antitrust law. Under the heading “Sue OPEC” Mr. Trump wrote:
We can start by suing OPEC for violating antitrust laws. Currently, bringing a lawsuit against OPEC is difficult. . . . The way to fix this is to make sure that Congress passes and the president signs the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act” (NOPEC) (S.394), which will amend the Sherman Antitrust Act and make it illegal for any foreign governments to act collectively to limit production or set prices. If we get it passed, the bill would clear the way for the United States to sue member nations of OPEC for price-fixing and anti-competitive behavior. . . . Imagine how much money the average American would save if we busted the OPEC cartel. (more…)
On Monday, October 3, 2016, Hillary Clinton issued a statement on her website titled “Hillary Clinton’s Vision for an Economy Where our Businesses, our Workers, and Our Consumers Grow and Prosper Together.”
Prior to this statement, there had been some speculation over what a Clinton presidency might bring in terms of antitrust enforcement.
Unlike President Barack Obama, former Secretary Clinton had not issued a clear policy statement on her antitrust position before Monday. She had, however, penned one short op-ed piece for Quartz, and had made some general statements on the campaign trail regarding the problems of industry consolidation. It was unclear from these prior statements whether a Clinton administration would mean any change in the current state of affairs at Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The current administration has challenged a higher percentage of mergers than any administration since before Reagan’s, but it has not significantly altered the law regarding what mergers are considered actionable.
In her Quartz op-ed, Secretary Clinton stated that “we need to fix [the system],” and decried the concentrated markets in the pharmaceutical, airline and telecommunications industries. But Secretary Clinton gave only two concrete examples of how she would “take on the fight” against “large corporations.” (more…)
On September 27, 2016, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit handed an important victory to the Federal Trade Commission and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in a closely watched hospital merger case. The decision provides clear guidance on the appropriate tests for determining geographic markets in hospital merger cases, while also suggesting that efficiencies claimed in many hospital transactions may face increased scrutiny in future cases.
Read “Third Circuit Blocks Hospital Merger in Key Victory for FTC on Geographic Market Definition”
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