FTC Has Bipartisan Assist for Merger Circumstances, Outgoing Chief Says

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FTC Has Bipartisan Assist for Merger Circumstances, Outgoing Chief Says

The US Federal Commerce Fee is more likely to have bipartisan help to maintain submitting instances to dam anticompetitive mergers underneath the Trump administration, mentioned Henry Liu, the outgoing director of the company’s Bureau of Competitors.

Liu, who led the company’s antitrust unit for the final 18 months underneath former FTC Chair Lina Khan, stepped down on Jan. 20. Throughout his tenure, the FTC received each merger case it filed, with one nonetheless pending in Texas federal court docket.

All of these fits had been introduced with bipartisan help from the company’s 5 commissioners, he mentioned. Of the seven instances, the FTC received 5 at trial; the businesses within the different two dropped their offers.

“Antitrust enforcement has quite a lot of unanimous, bipartisan help and that in lots of respects received’t change,” Liu mentioned in an interview earlier than his departure.

A majority vote of the company’s commissioners is required for the FTC to file a lawsuit. Earlier than Liu joined the company, the FTC misplaced two main merger challenges involving Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Liu mentioned antitrust officers’ view of what constitutes aggressive hurt from a merger and the way to repair that hurt has developed considerably. “The times are gone the place the companies had been simply narrowly targeted on horizontal 3-to-2 or 2-to-1 mergers. We’re taking a tough have a look at vertical mergers, potential competitors theories, and the useful availability of treatments.”

The Biden administration’s stepped-up antitrust enforcement underneath Khan drew criticism from enterprise teams and a few conservatives, who hope the Trump administration will take a softer strategy, notably on dealmaking. They might be dissatisfied, in line with Liu, who highlighted the constant bipartisan help for the Biden group’s instances.

Republican Commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Andrew Ferguson, who joined the company final spring, additionally voted in favor of stricter guidelines on disclosures for proposed mergers and acquisitions. These guidelines are set to enter impact subsequent month, although enterprise teams have now filed a lawsuit searching for to dam them.

Ferguson, who’s the brand new FTC chair after he was elevated by President Donald Trump, pledged to maintain up the company’s antitrust and shopper safety mandate. In an electronic mail to the FTC employees this week, a duplicate of which was seen by Bloomberg, Ferguson pledged “vigorous enforcement of the regulation” whereas implementing Trump’s program of presidency reform, together with winding down range and inclusion packages. The “company’s mission of defending shoppers, nonetheless, won’t change.”

Picture: Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg

Copyright 2025 Bloomberg.

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