Antitrust Chief News Today

Big Tech CEOs: The meetings come a month after Vestager resumed her job following her failed bid to head the Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank, with antitrust experts expecting her to show a tougher line towards companies in both merger and competition investigations.

Antitrust practitioners from around the world gathered in Washington, D.C. the week of March 27, 2023, for a series of industry meetings, centered around the American Bar Association...

Yves here. Get a cup of coffee. This is an in-depth but accessible discussion of how the Big Tech monopolists abused their powers to secure and perfect their advantaged positions. The good news is that the government sleeping giant has awoken to the threat they pose to its authority, and it pulling out antitrust weapons with the aim of cutting the monopolists down to size. Consider a conversation Alastair Mactaggart had among friends at a social outing. The San Francisco real estate developer ...

Pressed on what portion of the tax cuts were fully paid for, to which he replied that it was hard to know, as he said. congress add that, quote, we will know in the year eight, nine, ten, what revenues brought in. its way too early to tell. bradys comments contradict republican lawmakers. and the trump administration repeatedly made pushing the cut saying they would be fully paid for, that would in turn generate additional tax revenues for the federal government. according to the latest congress...

Exasperation to kelly, ive been telling cone to get this lawsuit filed and nothings happened. ive mentioned it 50 times, and nothings happened. i want to make sure its filed. i want that deal blocked. joining me now, nbc news senior media editor claire atkinson. good to see you. claire, what do we know about that exchange, whether that happened, donald trump telling john kelly in front of gary cohn he wants this tone? >> folks confirm to me its real. what is surprising about the whole situation ...

Here we have antitrust chief, they decided to go out and try to -- didnt work on the merits and it shouldnt have and, you know, we will see what they decide to do next. they said th are considering next steps but this is one where they ought to let it go because its right on policy and right on the merits. paul: dan, you and i have covered antitrust for many years, and always antitrust lawyers in justice department look for any case to try to stop to complex muscles to show they are still releva...

Here we have antitrust chief, they decided to go out and try to -- didnt work on the merits and it shouldnt have and, you know, we will see what they decide to do next. they said they are considering next steps but this is one where they ought to let it go because its right on policy and right on the merits. paul: dan, you and i have covered antitrust for many years, and always antitrust lawyers in justice department look for any case to try to stop to complex muscles to show they are still rele...

Indirectly or even directly because these mergers do end up having an impact on people. >> they definitely do. they have an impact on people not only on how much they pay for their television but how they watch that tv and how they watch these things because we are all starting to go into streaming and starting to watch more on our phones. these companies are trying to keep up and adapt. as we have been thinking about with privacy stuff is they are starting to use data in different ways. that is...

Also charge higher prices. but at&t is arguing and pushing back saying that in this rapidly evolving media landscape they need to acquire content in order to compete with the entities that they refer to collectively as fang, facebook, amazon, apple, netflix, google. those entities have changed the game here because they not only create the content, but they also distribute it. so obviously a lot of interest in this case. well be seeing some key players here at the first day of these opening argu...

Attached to this deal, brooke, so the at&t executives ive been talking with have been preparing for this moment, preparing for litigation. theyre going to release a statement later today. >> this is a vertical merger, right? which typically have been noncontroversy. >> what that means is a horizontal merger, when i have a channel, you have a channel and we merge. that would be horizontal. in this case, though, its a vertical merger because at&t doesnt own any channels right now. it owns a lot of...