Related: NYC Bar Association Urges ‘Rigorous Inquiry’ of Sessions’ Nomination
What follows is a snapshot of five questions for Sessions.
1. Antitrust enforcers face merger mania. Will Sessions give national companies a green light, or stop sign, to pursue big deals?
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division’s grappling with what one top official called a “merger wave” in many regulated industries. From health care and technology to agriculture, proposed multibillion-dollar deals have been blocked in court or outright abandoned in the face of antitrust scrutiny.
President-elect Donald Trump’s position on the AT&T-Time Warner deal appears unchanged from his opposition earlier on the campaign trail. In October, Trump flatly stated his administration would not approve the $85.4 billion acquisition.
“As an example of the power structure I’m fighting, AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few,” Trump said in a campaign speech. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Trump has not changed his tune.
In Washington’s federal trial court, judges will soon rule on Anthem’s proposed $48 billion acquisition of Cigna Corp. and Aetna Inc.’s proposed $37 billion tie-up with Humana Inc. The DOJ challenged both deals in July, alleging that they would amount to an “unprecedented consolidation” in the health insurance industry. The judges are expected to hand down their decisions by month’s end.
Sessions would take the reins of the department at a crucial time for antitrust enforcement. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has urged a “careful analysis”of the proposed Dow Chemical Co.-DuPont merger.
One Trump adviser, Joshua Wright, a former Federal Trade Commission commissioner, has argued that “big” isn’t inherently “bad.”
“The new antimerger fervor is based upon the presumption that they are never a good deal for consumers because more consolidation always leads to higher prices, and never leads to cost savings or product improvements that benefit consumers,” Wright wrote in The New York Times in November. “Both are demonstrably false.”
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