April 11, 2017
Antitrust: US & EU Merger Enforcement Year in Review
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer recently issued reports on US Merger Enforcement & EU Merger Enforcement during 2016. Here’s an excerpt from the intro to the US report:
2016 marked another year of robust M&A activity and another year of active merger enforcement in the United States. In many ways, 2016 continued the trends seen in 2015, in particular, greater scrutiny of certain transactions and a continued willingness by the authorities to litigate to stop transactions perceived as anticompetitive.
Despite this atmosphere of aggressive enforcement, the FTC & DOJ continued to carefully scrutinize each transaction, analyzing the individual facts and potential antitrust risks. The DOJ and FTC permitted the vast majority of deals to proceed either unconditionally (such as the sale of GE Appliances to Haier Group and Marriott International’s acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts), or with conditions to remedy the competitive concerns.
And here’s an excerpt from the intro to the EU report:
The European Commission continued to pursue longer and more data-intensive investigations in 2016. At the same time, Commissioner Margrethe Vestager signaled a desire to implement reforms that lessen the burden of investigations, particularly for non-substantive transactions.
Last year was notable in particular for the first prohibited merger since Commissioner Vestager took office in 2014, Hutchison 3G UK/Telefónica UK, and the abandoned Baker Hughes/Halliburton transaction that went through an intensive Phase II review. And while the total number of Phase II investigations decreased slightly from last year, there were still a significant number that materialized. Only a single transaction was cleared without any remedies in Phase II in 2016.
– John Jenkins