The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are considering changes to the Horizontal and Vertical Merger Guidelines and have asked whether the current guidelines “underemphasize or neglect … potential competition.” Join Bilal Sayyed, former director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning and now TechFreedom’s Senior Competition Counsel, and a group of distinguished panelists, for a discussion of the analysis of mergers involving potential and nascent competitors, and whether and how the merger guidelines might be revised to more directly address mergers that may affect future competition.
This 90-minute webinar will take place on Tuesday, January 24 @ 2:00 p.m. ET and will feature:
- Bilal Sayyed, Senior Competition Counsel, TechFreedom, and former Director, Office of Policy Planning, Federal Trade Commission. (Bio)
- Daniel Francis, Assistant Professor of Law, New York University, and former Deputy Director, Bureau of Competition, Federal Trade Commission. (Bio)
- Kristen C. Limarzi, Partner, Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, and former Section Chief, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice. (Bio)
- Henry C. Su, Partner, Bradley, former Attorney Advisor to FTC Commissioner Thomas Rosch and FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. (Bio)
- Sean P. Sullivan, Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law, and former attorney, Federal Trade Commission. (Bio)
- Thomas G. Wollmann, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research. (Bio)
- John M. Yun, Associate Professor of Law, George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School and Deputy Executive Director, Global Antitrust Institute; former Acting Deputy Assistant Director, Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, and Economic Advisor to Commissioner Joshua D. Wright. (Bio)
Background reading for the webinar includes:
- Bilal Sayyed, Actual Potential Entrants, Emerging Competitors, and the Merger Guidelines: Examples from FTC Enforcement 1993-2022 (2022)
- Daniel Francis, Making Sense of Monopolization, 84 Antitrust Law Journal 779 (2022)
- Daniel Francis, Revisiting the Merger Guidelines: Protecting an Enforcement Asset, CPI Antitrust Chronicle, November 2022
- Kristen C. Limarzi and Gregory J. Werden, Forward Looking Merger Analysis and the Superfluous Potential Competition Doctrine, 77 Antitrust Law Journal 109 (2010)
- Sean P. Sullivan & Henry C. Su, Antitrust Time Travel: Entry and Potential Competition, Antitrust Law Journal (forthcoming 2023)
- Sean P. Sullivan, Market Definition, 1 Research Handbook on Abuse of Dominance and Monopolization (Elgar, forthcoming, 2023)
- Sean P. Sullivan, Anticompetitive Entrenchment, 68 U. Kan. L. Rev. 1133 (2020)
- Thomas G. Wollmann, Stealth Consolidation: Evidence from the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, 1 American Economic Review Insights 77 (2019)
- Thomas G. Wollmann, How to Get Away with Merger: Stealth Consolidation and its Effects on US Healthcare, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 27274 (July 2021)
- John M. Yun, Potential Competition, Nascent Competitors, and Killer Acquisitions, GAI Report on the Digital Economy (2020)
- John M. Yun, Are We Dropping the Crystal Ball? Understanding Nascent and Potential Competition in Antitrust, 104 Marq. L. Rev. 613 (2021)
- The Concept of Potential Competition – Note by the United States, for the 135th OECD Competition Committee Meeting (June 10, 2021)
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Register for this event on Zoom, and share it on Twitter and Mastodon. We can be reached for comment at media@techfreedom.org. Read our related work, including:
- Actual Potential Entrants, Emerging Competitors, and the Merger Guidelines: Examples from FTC Enforcement 1993-2022 (2022)
- Our comments to the DoJ/FTC on merger enforcement (Apr. 21, 2022)
- GAFAM Acquisition Activity: Does It Merit Special Merger Rules?, (Feb. 10, 2022)
- Our comments on the draft 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines, (Feb. 26, 2020)
- The Long and Successful History of Nascent Acquisitions Suggests Caution in Rethinking Antitrust Enforcement, (Nov. 20, 2020)
About TechFreedom:
TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.