Articles Posted in DOJ Antitrust Highlights

On September 10, 2014, the House Judiciary Committee passed legislation to eliminate certain discrepancies between merger reviews conducted by the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. The Standard Merger and Acquisition Reviews Through Equal Rules Act (SMARTER Act), H.R. 5402, introduced by Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX), would codify certain recommendations included in a 2007…

On May 30, 2014, the lawyers representing Donald Sterling, the controversial ex-owner of the National Basketball Association (“NBA”) franchise, the Los Angeles Clippers (“Clippers”), filed a complaint before the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California to fight an order by the NBA that would force him to divest his ownership in the…

On May 20, 2014, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that it will require Ardent Mills, a proposed merger of the wheat milling operations of the companies ConAgra, Cargill, and CHS, to divest four competitively significant mills to an upfront buyer before clearing the deal for approval. These four mills are located in regions encompassing…

On May 27, 2014, the attorneys of Japanese auto part companies filed a motion in a federal court in Michigan, indicating they will appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals a ruling made by U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani that established a premise that an industry-wide cartel conspiracies existed among Japanese auto part makers.…

On February 18, 2014, U.S. District Judge Jane J. Boyle granted a motion by U.S. hotel chains and online travel agencies to dismiss without prejudice an antitrust case alleging consumers paid inflated prices on hotel rooms booked online. Judge Boyle believed there to be two main arguments from the plaintiffs:  first, defendants conspired to restrain competition in…

On February 18, 2014, the American Antitrust Institute (“AAI”), together with the Food & Water Watch reiterated calls for the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to block the planned merger of the milling activities of ConAgra-Cargill, CHS and Horizon Milling into a new joint-venture called Ardent Mills.  According to the complainants, the merger would effectively concentrate…

On February 13, 2014, the heads of the antitrust agencies of the U.S, Canada and Mexico—Chairwoman Edith Ramire of the FTC, Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer of the DOJ’s Aititrust Division, Canadian Commissioner of Competition John Pecman, and President Alejandra Palacios Prieto of the Mexican Federal Competition Commission—met in Washington, D.C. to discuss mutual efforts…

On February 10, 2014, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York dealt a blow to Apple in its efforts to have a court-appointed monitor removed from his position.  The Second Circuit ruled that lawyer Michael Bromwich can continue to oversee the company’s antitrust compliance. While Apple wanted to remove the monitor altogether for…

Background The Trial Judge’s Opinion The United States District Court for the Northern District of California agreed with the DOJ’s characterization of Bazaarvoice’s June 2012 acquisition as one that eliminated its “closest and only serious competitor”.  In reaching its decision, the court applied the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines (“Guidelines”) and relied heavily on pre-merger “hot…

The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (“Antitrust Division”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) will accept Hart-Scott-Rodino (“HSR”) premerger notification filings during the U.S. federal government shutdown.The Antitrust Division and the FTC split reviews under the HSR Act, which requires that mergers or acquisitions worth over $70.9 million must notify the federal government. The HSR…