The Biden administration issued final rules aimed at stopping companies from buying up rivals to dominate their industries, a part of its broader antitrust crackdown.
Mergers in sectors that have few big competitors or are in highly concentrated markets will be scrutinized more closely, according to the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, the agencies that enforce antitrust laws. They jointly issued the guidelines.
The proposals are similar to those they issued in July but exclude a separate guideline for deals between indirect competitors, or so-called vertical transactions.
“These finalized Guidelines provide transparency into how the Justice Department is protecting the American people from the ways in which unlawful, anticompetitive practices manifest themselves in our modern economy,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The 51-page document addresses market concentration, saying mergers that significantly increase concentration in a highly concentrated market would raise a presumption of illegality.
Without naming the companies, the guidelines hint at extra scrutiny for some combinations in the future. There may be a conflict of interest, the guidelines say, when a platform has an incentive “to give its own products and services an advantage over other participants competing on the platform.”
The regulators said the finalized guidelines were the culmination of a two-year process, including the gathering of thousands of public comments. They replace previous rules on horizontal and vertical mergers but aren’t legally binding.
Pressure is building on corporate combinations. On Monday,
Adobe
scrapped a $20 billion merger with the design software maker Figma after regulatory pressure in Europe. And that came after biotech
Illumina
announced the sale of cancer start-up Grail.
FTC Chair Lina Khan said Monday the guidelines reflect the new realities of business in the modern economy.
“Policing unlawful mergers is our front line of defense against harmful corporate consolidation,” she said.
Write to Liz Moyer at [email protected]
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