In the wake of two successful merger challenges by the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a study on merger remedies, providing some lessons that parties to future proposed mergers would be wise to heed.
On Jan. 19, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission issued Merger Remedies 2006-2012: A Report of the Bureaus of Competition and Economics. This report analyzed the effectiveness of recent FTC merger orders, using a case study method to review 89 such orders including 79 divestitures to 121 buyers. The case study method used by the FTC mainly relied on responses from market participants (buyers, respondents, competitors, and customers) willing to share their experiences and views on commission remedies and the remedies’ impacts on competition in the relevant market. The study defined a successful remedy as one that maintained competition at its pre-merger level or returned competition to that level within a two to three year period post-order.
