Financial regulatory authorities such as the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the French Autorité des marchésfinanciers frequently impose on companies that are listed on a stock exchange the obligation to disclose key information to investors to help them make informed investment decisions.
The difficulties for companies lie principally in the nature of the information to be disclosed, the timing of the disclosure, and the balance of the obligation towards financial regulatory authorities on one hand, and competition authorities on the other.
In May, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) required Hikma Pharmaceuticals PLC to divest its 23 percent interest in Unimark Remedies, Ltd. and its US marketing rights to a generic drug under manufacture by Unimark as a condition to allowing Hikma to complete its acquisition of Roxane Laboratories. The FTC was concerned that Hikma’s continued holding of a 23 percent interest in Unimark after consummation of its proposed acquisition of Roxane would create the incentive and ability for Hikma to eliminate future competition between Roxane and Hikma/Unimark in the sale of generic flecainide tablets (a drug used to treat abnormally fast heart rhythms) in the United States.
The FTC’s divestiture requirement was unusual but not unprecedented. The Horizontal Merger Guidelines identify three theories of competitive harm associated with an acquisition or holding of a small but significant minority interest in a competitor.
Minority ownership, and any associated rights, such as veto rights over the competing firm’s budget or strategic decisions, or representation on its board of directors, may allow the shareholder to forestall, delay or otherwise hamper the competing firm’s further development or marketing of competitive products
The holder of a minority interest in a competing firm has diminished incentives to compete aggressively with the competitor firm because the holder obtains an economic benefit from the success of the competing firm through its partial ownership of that competitor.
The holder of a minority interest in a competing firm may have access to non-public, competitively sensitive information of the competing firm, and thus may be better able to coordinate its business decisions—such as pricing, output, or research and development efforts—with those of the competing firm, thus diminishing competition.
These theories of potential antitrust harm from minority interest acquisitions are not unique to the United States; other competition agencies, including the European Union’s competition directorate, accept and apply these theories when considering the competitive impact of a firm’s actual or proposed partial ownership interest in a competitor. However, the United States applies a significantly lower threshold than the European Union (and other competition agencies) for the pre-acquisition notification of an entity’s acquisition of a minority, non-controlling interest in another firm.
In the last two years, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) brought, and won, several litigated merger cases by establishing narrow markets comprised of a subset of customers for a product. This narrow market theory, known as price discrimination market definition, allowed the agencies to allege markets in which the merging parties faced few rivals and, therefore, estimate high post-merger market shares. By their nature, price discrimination markets can lead to a challenge of a high-value deal where only a small number of the merging parties’ customers are allegedly harmed. Given the increased usage by the agencies and now judicial acceptance of the theory, counsel for merging parties must consider the potential for price discrimination market definition in assessing the antitrust risks for transactions.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division have been actively challenging mergers and acquisitions (M&A) across a variety of industries where there is not a viable or acceptable remedy to mitigate the agencies’ competitive concerns. Parties to M&A transactions that the FTC or the DOJ believe are likely to harm competition may remedy those concerns by divesting certain businesses or assets. The parties may divest the business or assets that raise anticompetitive concerns and proceed with the remainder of the transaction. Divestitures in horizontal mergers (i.e., transactions between competitors) aim to maintain or replace the competition in the relevant market that might otherwise be lost as a result of the transaction.
Proposed divestitures are evaluated on the particular facts of the case and must be robust enough to present a viable competitor. Recent transactions demonstrate that the FTC and DOJ will reject divestiture proposals that the agency finds insufficient, putting the entire deal at risk for merging parties. Before proposing a remedy to the FTC or DOJ, parties should keep the following in mind: (1) in today’s enforcement environment, the agencies are more demanding in seeking effective remedies; (2) the agencies are more likely to require a buyer up front, particularly if the parties seek to divest assets that are less than an entire on-going, stand-alone business, or the to-be-divested assets are at risk of deterioration pending divestiture; and (3) a buyer must be competitively and financially viable.
On July 14, 2016, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the restructuring of a planned $1.5 billion transaction between Tullett Prebon Group Ltd. (Tullett Prebon) and ICAP plc adequately addresses the DOJ’s concerns that the transaction would violate Section 8 of the Clayton Act by creating an interlocking directorate. The parties restructured their transaction after the DOJ issued a Second Request to adequately investigate the parties post-closing ownership structure. The DOJ’s investigation of this transaction should serve as a warning for companies considering transactions with competitors where the parties will continue to compete post-merger: the antitrust agencies are going to extensively review any corporate governance structures which could be seen as creating a “cozy relationship” between competitors.
Section 8 of the Clayton Act generally prohibits representatives of a corporation from serving on the board of directors of a competitor corporation. This provision of the Clayton Act, which seeks to prevent the sharing of competitively sensitive information through director communications, continues to be rigorously enforced by the antitrust agencies since the FTC’s 2009 investigation of individuals serving on the boards of multiple large technology companies.
Last year, Tullett Prebon agreed to purchase ICAP’s global hybrid voice broking and information business. Voice broking involves speaking to clients on the phone to negotiate prices and facilitate business. The alternative to voice broking is electronic broking where prices are put on a platform and customers can transact without the need for a human broker. Voice broking is typically used for illiquid assets, whereas electronic broking is used more often in highly liquid markets. By selling its voice broking business, ICAP sought to focus on its electronic trading services.
As originally structured, the transaction would have resulted in ICAP owning 19.9 percent of Tullett Prebon and having the right to nominate one member of Tullett Prebon’s board of directors. This structure was problematic for the DOJ due to the fact that ICAP and Tullett Prebon would continue to compete post-merger in non-voice broking platforms. This led to the DOJ issuing a Second Request, which was focused on post-closing shareholding and governance arrangements.
After the restricting of the transaction, ICAP will not retain any ownership in Tullett and will not have the ability to appoint any directors. This new structure will allow the parties to be “actually independent of each other” according to Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse. “As originally proposed this deal would have violated [a] core principle – creating a cozy relationship among competitors.”
Companies considering transactions with competitors where the parties will continue to compete should exercise caution in their ownership structures and corporate governance post-closing. Any arrangements which can be interpreted as allowing the parties to share information or create a conflict of interest will be closely examined by antitrust regulators and may lead to extended reviews.
McDermott’s Antitrust M&A Snapshotis a resource for in-house counsel and others who deal with antitrust M&A issues but are not faced with these issues on a daily basis. In each quarterly issue, we will provide concise summaries of Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Justice (DOJ) and European Commission (EC) news and events related to M&A, including significant ongoing investigations, trials and consent orders, as well as analysis on the trends we see developing in the antitrust review process.
United States: January – June Update
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and US Department of Justice (DOJ) have been actively challenging mergers and acquisitions in the first half of 2016. In some instances, the parties abandoned their deal once the FTC or DOJ issued a complaint, in others, the parties entered into consent agreements with the agencies. In matters where a divestiture is an acceptable remedy, the FTC and DOJ have required robust divestitures with financially and competitively viable buyers. There is increasing pressure for broad divestitures and for upfront buyers in industries where the agencies do not have ample experience and where there may not be multiple competitive buyers willing to acquire the assets.
In merger challenges, the agencies have been successful in obtaining preliminary injunctions in Washington, DC, but have been less successful outside of their home court. The agencies have successfully argued price discrimination markets, where sales of products to a narrow group of customers were the market, and courts are accepting the agencies’ narrow market definition. We also see a trend in challenges due to innovation, where the merging parties are the market leaders in new developments and research and development in particular areas. Investigations continue to take many months, with many approaching or exceeding a year.
EU: January – June Update
In the EU, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of notified transactions to the European Commission (from 277 notifications in 2013 to 337 in 2015). Most of these transactions have been cleared by the EU regulator in Phase I without any commitments. However, there have still been a number of antitrust interventions requiring the merging parties to offer, often far-reaching, remedies. One industry has recently seen a particularly high ratio of antitrust intervention is the telecoms sector. For example, in the merger between the mobile operators Telenor and TeliaSonera, the parties abandoned the transaction due to European Commission opposition to the transaction. The European Commission publicly announced that the transaction would not have been cleared, and that the remedies offered by the companies were not convincing. A prohibition decision was also issued, despite the offered remedies, in the failed combination of Telefónica UK’s “O2” and Hutchison 3G UK’s “Three”. This transaction involved the longest merger control review by the European Commission to end up in a prohibition decision (243 calendar days, compared to the average of 157 calendar days to block a deal).
With regard to current trends in merger control remedies at the level of the European Commission, there continues to be [...]
In the last year, the US antitrust regulators successfully challenged multiple transactions in court and forced companies to abandon several other transactions as a result of threatened enforcement actions. Looking back at the different cases, there are some trends that we see developing in the government’s positioning on mergers, and these should be kept in mind as parties contemplate mergers and acquisitions moving forward.
On May 9, 2016, the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania denied the motion by the Federal Trade Commission and Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General for a preliminary injunction to enjoin the merger of Penn State Hershey Medical Center and PinnacleHealth System. The decision ends a string of victories by the FTC in recent health care merger litigation.
On May 9, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) posted an article summarizing recent developments and areas of competitive sensitivity in the acquisition of partial equity interests. Most antitrust challenges to mergers or acquisitions involve situations in which an acquiror takes control of the target company. However, substantive antitrust issues also can arise from acquisitions of less than controlling interests. The FTC has previously sought substantial remedies in acquisitions of minority interests in a competitor. These remedies have included imposing firewalls, altering companies’ ownership interests to become passive investors, or seeking divestitures.
The FTC’s post, which can be found here, outlines three ways in which partial-interest acquisitions in a competitor could lessen competition. First, an entity could use its interest—through representatives on a competitor’s board, for example—to affect decisions of the target. Second, an acquiring company’s partial ownership in its competitor could reduce the acquiring company’s incentives to compete aggressively. This feature arises because, by virtue of holding an interest in its rival, a company can still achieve an economic gain even if it does not win a competition or make a sale if the company in which it holds an equity interest obtains that business. Third, an entity could gain access to non-public, competitively sensitive information of its competitor, increasing the risk of coordinated conduct.
None of these theories are new, and they are contained in the 2010 FTC / DOJ Horizontal Merger Guidelines. Nevertheless, the FTC’s posting provides a helpful reminder for companies contemplating transactions that they need to evaluate not only the obvious anticompetitive effects raised by acquisitions of control, but also the less obvious theories of competitive harm.
On 20 April 2016, the European Commission (Commission) cleared, under its merger control rules, the acquisition of Equens and PaySquare by Worldline subject to, amongst others, a commitment to license technology to any customer interested, at Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) conditions.
Worldline is a French provider of payment services and terminals, financial processing and software licensing and e-transactions services. Equens offers a number of services across the value chain of both payments processing and cards processing services. Its fully-owned subsidiary, PaySquare, provides merchant acquiring services. This transaction combines two large payment systems operators, active across the full value chain in both payment processing and card processing services.
The EU antitrust regulator was concerned that the acquisition would have raised certain issues with respect to, in particular, merchant acquiring services in Germany. The Commission’s market investigation revealed that Worldline’s Poseidon software and modules are used by the majority of German network service providers (including PaySquare), there are no other readily available alternatives to Poseidon and post-transaction, Worldline would have the ability and the incentives to favour its new subsidiary PaySquare, in terms of price and quality, over other network service providers relying on Poseidon.
In order to address the Commission’s concerns, the companies offered a commitment to grant licenses for the Poseidon software on FRAND terms during a period of 10 years. Specifically, this commitment consists of the following elements:
The granting of a license for Poseidon and its modules to third-party network service providers under FRAND terms and capping of the maintenance fees
A monitoring mechanism to ensure compliance with FRAND terms by a licensing trustee and by a group composed of network service providers
Giving access to the Poseidon source code under certain conditions
Transferring the governance of the ZVT protocol, on which most German point of sale terminals run, to an independent not for profit industry organisation
The Commission’s decision to accept this commitment is interesting for a number reasons; the Commission generally has a strong preference for structural rather than behavioural undertakings, FRAND obligations are typically applicable to technologies that are standardised, and this case presents the first time that a commitment to licence on FRAND terms has been used as a remedy under the EU Merger Regulation.
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