Antitrust Lawyer Blog

On October 13, 2009, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) settled with AT&T Inc. (“AT&T”) regarding its $944 million acquisition of Centennial Communications Corp. (“Centennial”). Specifically, AT&T is required to divest its assets in eight Cellular Marketing Areas (“CMA”), as defined by the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”), in southwestern and central Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi in…

On October 7, 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) settled its litigation regarding Carilion Clinic’s (“Carilion”) acquisition of two outpatient clinics. On July 24, 2009, the FTC issued an administrative complaint challenging Carilion’s August 2008 acquisition of two outpatient clinics in the Roanoke, Virginia area. Prior to the acquisition, the Center for Advanced Imaging (“CAI”)…

On September 8, 2009, the Department of Justice announced that it would not challenge the formation of a Reliance Network, a joint venture between seven regional less-than-truckload (“LTL”) freight transportation companies, based on the representations made by the applicants.The Reliance Network is comprised of: Averitt Express Inc.; DATS Trucking Inc.; Lakeville Motor Express Inc.; Land…

On September 25, 2009, the FTC settled with K+S Aktiengesellschaft (“K+S”) regarding its $1.68 billion proposed acquisition of Morton International, Inc. (“Morton”). The proposed merger would have combined K+S’s subsidiary, International Salt Company LLC (“ISCO”) with Morton. According to the FTC, the combined company would have enjoyed a 70% market share of the bulk de-icing…

On September 22, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced that they will solicit public comment and hold joint public workshops to explore the possibility of updating the Horizontal Merger Guidelines that are used by both agencies to evaluate the potential competitive effects of mergers and acquisitions. The Merger Guidelines…

On September 18, the DOJ presented its a statement of its views regarding the proposed class action settlement between the American Association of Publishers and Google. As the parties continue to modify the settlement agreement, the DOJ issued a statement of interest to the court to provide the court with the Antitrust Division’s concerns relating…

On September 8, 2009, the Department of Justice announced that it would not challenge the formation of a Reliance Network, a joint venture between seven regional less-than-truckload (“LTL”) freight transportation companies, based on the representations made by the applicants.The Reliance Network is comprised of: Averitt Express Inc.; DATS Trucking Inc.; Lakeville Motor Express Inc.; Land…

On September 4, 2009, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that it would not challenge a joint purchasing agreement of certain medical supplies between Memorial Health, Inc (“Memorial”) and St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System (“St. Joseph’s/Candler”). The efficiencies produced by the joint purchasing agreement will reduce transactions for the hospitals and will result in lower costs…

On September 4, the FTC filed comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) Notice of Inquiry regarding development of a National Broadband Plan that will seek to ensure that every American has access to broadband capability. In its comments, the FTC states that the FCC should take into consideration the FTC’s two primary…

On September 3, the companies announced that they received clearance from the Department of Justice to complete their proposed merger without conditions.The DOJ issued a second reqeust around June 22. The entire investigation took approximately four months. The second request period, however, was relatively short as it lasted only about two months. Despite the extra…