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.
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…)
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.
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.
Read the full article here.
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.
Read the full article here.
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.
Read the full article here.
On July 25, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) submitted comments to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) supporting a proposed rule only affecting VA facilities that would authorize Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) to provide primary health care services without the mandatory supervision of physicians, regardless of state or local laws, with limited exceptions. Currently, APRNs in the employ of the VA are subject to VA requirements as well as various regulations on a state-by-state basis, with physician supervision required in over half of the states. Under Proposed Rule RIN 2900-AP44, APRNs that meet VA standards would have the authority to provide a described list of services without such physician supervision.
While the FTC acknowledged the important role of federal and state legislators in determining the “best balance of policy priorities,” the FTC has expressed skepticism of state laws requiring physician supervision. They have noted that such requirements “may raise competition concerns because they effectively give one group of health care professionals the ability to restrict access to the market by another competing group of health care professionals, thereby denying health care consumers the benefits of greater competition.” In fact, the FTC argued that physician supervision requirements may increase the cost of services that APRNs could provide, and by relaxing such requirements, consumers “may gain access to services that would otherwise be unavailable.” This increased access could also address shortages in access to primary and specialty care. As the FTC noted, the US has current and projected health care workforce shortages, particularly in primary care physicians, and the VA has emphasized the need to provide care to veterans in rural areas who have limited access to specialty services, some of which APRNs could provide.
Additionally, the FTC commented that the proposed rule could yield information about models of health care delivery. Under the current system, the VA’s use of APRNs is limited by state regulation. By preempting the state requirements, the FTC argued that the VA would be free to “innovate and experiment with models of team-based care.”
Interestingly, the proposed rule only applies within the scope of VA employment, which falls outside of “competition in the private sector” for which the FTC acknowledged it is typically concerned. But in this instance, the FTC concluded that the VA’s actions could positively impact competition in the health care service provider markets by encouraging entry that could “broaden the availability of health care services” outside of the VA’s system.
This is another example of antitrust regulators’ interest in occupational licensing and competition concerns generally. Just as this letter encourages competition between physicians and nurses for certain health care services, last month, US Department of Justice (DOJ) and FTC jointly submitted a letter encouraging competition between lawyers and non-lawyers in the provision of legal services in North Carolina. We previously analyzed that letter, and other important developments in occupational licensing that have occurred since February 2015, when the Supreme Court affirmed an FTC decision not to apply state action antitrust immunity for [...]
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McDermott’s Antitrust M&A Snapshot is 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 [...]
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