Washington’s main antitrust regulators–the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ)–made a joint announcement on Tuesday that they intend to look at big tech mergers through a different lens in the future.
The two agencies held a joint news conference Monday morning to announce the beginning of a joint process to write new guidelines for considering horizontal mergers, or those between companies that may compete in the same marketplace. (The agencies use a different set of guidelines to consider vertical mergers of companies within the same supply chain).
Such guidelines might have been used, for example, by the FTC to decide to file its current lawsuit against Facebook/Meta, which seeks to unwind the social networking giant’s past acquisitions of Whatsapp and Instagram.
“This inquiry launched by the FTC and DOJ is designed to ensure that our merger guidelines accurately reflect modern market realities and equip us to forcefully enforce the law…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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