The year 2015 has been another active one in antitrust and competition law. Government regulators have continued to aggressively enforce the antitrust laws through merger challenges, criminal investigations, and other enforcement actions, and the vast array of private litigation has led to further development of important antitrust principles.
Merger Enforcement
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had mixed results in litigating merger enforcement actions this year. In February, the FTC sought a preliminary injunction in FTC v. Sysco,1 to prevent Sysco and US Foods from merging. Sysco and US Foods are the largest and second largest “broadline” food-service distributors, which means that they “sell[] and deliver[] a ‘broad’ array of food and related products to just about anywhere food is consumed outside the home.”1 The key issues in the case were market definition and the viability of the proposed “fix,” a divestiture of 11 distribution facilities to the third largest broadline distributor.2 The companies argued that the relevant market consists of all firms with which they compete in the $231 billion food service industry, which would include not only “broadline food distributors, but also specialty distributors, systems distributors, and cash-and-carry stores.”
