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On Thursday, Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, along with four other Democratic senators, unveiled a major change to antitrust law that would dramatically affect the biggest tech companies. The biggest change is that the law would shift the burden of proof when considering whether an acquisition or merger is anticompetitive.
Currently, the government has to prove that a deal would be bad for consumers because it would hurt competition. The new legislation would require companies with a dominant position in their market to prove that a deal doesn t create an appreciable risk of materially lessening competition. That could be a very high bar to clear.
Baseline HSR threshold now $92 million
The Hart-Scott-Rodino Act requires that parties to certain transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, acquisitions of voting securities, and assets and minority investments, file notifications with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission and observe a statutory waiting period if the transaction meets specified size-of-person and size-of-transaction thresholds and does not fall within an exemption.
Filing thresholds under the HSR Act will decrease by approximately 2.1% for 2021, based on the change in the US gross national product (GNP) during 2020. This is the first time since 2010 that the thresholds have fallen, and only the second time since 2004, when the thresholds started to adjust annually.
The Department of Justice recently followed through on its stated intent to bring criminal actions against companies and individuals for alleged anticompetitive employment practices..
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
More than four years after first announcing its intent to criminally prosecute employers and individuals who enter into naked wage-fixing or no-poaching agreements with other employers,
1 the Department of Justice Antitrust Division (Antitrust Division) recently brought its first-ever criminal charges in two different cases for alleged anticompetitive conduct in labor markets. With these two criminal actions, it is clear that DOJ’s public promises to prosecute anticompetitive conduct affecting U.S. labor markets were not just empty threats. Such charges highlight the criminal risks now associated with agreements between labor market competitors related to hiring, wages, and other terms of employment. Below we:
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The year 2020 was an eventful one in the world of healthcare antitrust. The year began with the announcement of the precedent-setting settlement of the California Attorney General’s action against Sutter Health and ended with the settlement of multi-district antitrust litigation against the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (and its member Blues). Along the way, Congress passed legislation repealing the antitrust protections that health insurers had enjoyed for 75 years under the McCarran Ferguson Act, the Federal Trade Commission lost its first hospital merger challenge in many years, and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division made good on its threats to bring criminal antitrust actions in healthcare. After such an eventful year, what is 2021 likely to bring in the way of further developments? Look for these issues to dominate the healthcare antitrust headlines in 2021: