Page 2 - Antitrust Chief News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Here we have antitrust chief, they decided to go out and try to -- didn't work on the merits and it shouldn't 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 it's 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 relevant even though they end up losing, is this going to now -- with this defeat unleash a lot of merg...

Here we have antitrust chief, they decided to go out and try to -- didn't work on the merits and it shouldn't 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 it's 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 relevant even though they end up losing, is this going to now -- with this defeat unleash a lot of me...

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 a lot of what is behind these deals is they are trying to keep up with facebook and googles and how...

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. we'll be seeing some key players here at the first day of these opening arguments. we'll see the ceo of at&t randall stevenson, the ceo of time warner jeff buicks, in addition...

Attached to this deal, brooke, so the at&t executives i've been talking with have been preparing for this moment, preparing for litigation. they're 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, it's a vertical merger because at&t doesn't own any channels right now. it owns a lot of wireless customers' relationships. a lot of people in the country have at&t for their phones. s...