SubscribeEarlier this week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) report for fiscal year 2012 (FY2012), which summarizes enforcement actions and key statistics regarding number of filings, second requests and challenges. The press release and a link to the report can be found here.
Filings were relatively flat from 2011 to 2012. There were fewer second requests and there wasn’t a remarkable difference in the overall percentage of filings resulting in second requests (3.9 percent in 2011; 3.5 percent in 2012). In 2012, the FTC issued more second requests than the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). However, when looking at the number of second requests each agency issued as a percentage of the filings each agency was "cleared" to investigate, the FTC only issued second requests in 14.8 percent of the filings it was cleared to investigate, whereas the DOJ issued second requests in 40.8 percent of filings the agency was cleared to investigate. Overall, it is hard to read too much into these statistics other than reportable transactions remain steady and there do not seem to be any wild swings in enforcement trends.
The report also notes that of 60 corrective filings (i.e., filings where the parties closed the transaction and later realized they should have filed), two resulted in enforcement actions with civil penalties ($500,000 and $850,000).
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