U.S. Officials To Tighten Noose On Anti-Trust Law Violators

Two of the Biden administration’s top trustbusters announced a new effort to toughen competition policy in Washington, the New York Times reported.

Photo Insert: Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram was the subject of much controversy.

Lina Khan, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Jonathan Kanter, the head of antitrust at the Justice Department, said they want to rewrite of rules for big mergers to “accurately reflect modern market realities and equip us to forcefully enforce the law against unlawful deals.”

Tech deals take center stage in a rethink of antitrust rules. The review will focus on how the merger approval process applies to free services like Google and Facebook, where guidelines that concentrate on whether a deal increases costs to consumers are difficult to apply.

It will also zero in on “killer acquisitions,” in which large firms snap up smaller rivals to prevent them from growing into a threat, like the FTC has accused Facebook of doing with Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.

The FTC has already been reviewing guidelines for “vertical deals,” or acquisitions of a supplier rather than a direct competitor. One example is the Microsoft-Activision megadeal, announced hours before the Khan and Kanter news conference. In a sign of its confidence in the deal, Microsoft will pay Activision up to $3 billion in breakup fees if regulators block the transaction.

Khan and Kanter said they hoped to release final guidelines by the end of the year. In the meantime, one way their agencies can more closely scrutinize mergers is by taking deals to court — and they have just given clues about where they might direct their attention.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic