The Obama administration has earned a reputation for being tough on big mergers and acquisitions by scuttling deals between companies such as AT&T and T-Mobile, Anheuser Busch InBev and Grupo Modelo, and Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange. But is that reputation really deserved? In InsideCounsel's May cover story, experts break down trends in merger enforcement by the antitrust agencies and weigh in on whether the current administration has paid special attention to M&As.

Is the Obama administration especially tough on mergers?

Despite numerous media reports to the contrary, experts say that although merger challenges have risen under the Obama administration, the increase is not particularly dramatic. The number of challenges was unusually low during George W. Bush's presidency: The ratio of enforcement actions to merger filings was 0.75 percent and 0.9 percent in Bush's first and second terms, respectively, according to the Stanford Law Review.