Archives For Hart–Scott–Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act

FTC Moves Closer Toward Ex Ante Merger Regulation

Alden Abbott —  28 October 2021
Large group of people in the shape of two puzzle pieces on a white background.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken another step away from case-specific evaluation of proposed mergers and toward an ex ante regulatory approach in its Oct. 25 “Statement of the Commission on Use of Prior Approval Provisions in Merger Orders.” Though not unexpected, this unfortunate initiative once again manifests the current FTC leadership’s disdain for long-accepted economically sound antitrust-enforcement principles.

Discussion

High levels of merger activity should, generally speaking, be viewed as a symptom of a vibrant economy, not a reason for economic concern. Horizontal mergers typically are driven by the potential to realize real cost savings, unrelated to anticompetitive reductions in output.

Non-horizontal mergers often put into force welfare-enhancing reductions of double marginalization, while uniting complements and achieving synergies in ways that seek efficiencies. More generally, proposed acquisitions frequently reflect an active market for corporate control that seeks to reallocate scarce resources to higher-valued uses (see, for example, Henry Manne’s seminal article on “Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control”). Finally, by facilitating cost reductions, synergies, and improvements in resource allocations within firms, mergers may allow the new consolidated entity to compete more effectively in the marketplace, thereby enhancing competition.

Given the economic benefits frequently generated by mergers, government antitrust enforcers should not discourage them, nor should they intervene to block them, absent a strong showing that a particular transaction would likely reduce competition and harm consumer welfare. In the United States, the Hart-Scott-Rodino Premerger Notification Act of 1976 (HSR) and its implementing regulations generally have reflected this understanding. They have done this by requiring that proposed transactions above a certain size threshold be notified to the FTC and the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), and by providing a framework for timely review, allowing most notified mergers to close promptly.

In the relatively few cases where agency enforcement staff have identified competitive problems, the HSR framework usually has enabled timely negotiation of possible competitive fixes (divestitures and, less typically, behavioral remedies). Where fixes have not been feasible, filing parties generally have been able to decide whether to drop a transaction or prepare for litigation within a reasonable time period. Under the HSR framework, enforcers generally have respected the time sensitivity of merger proposals and acted expeditiously (with a few exceptions) to review complicated and competitively sensitive transactions. The vast majority of HSR filings that facially raise no plausible competitive issues historically have been dealt with swiftly—often through “early termination” policies that provide the merging parties an antitrust go-ahead well before the end of HSR’s initial 30-day review period.

In short, although far from perfect, HSR processes have sought to minimize regulatory impediments to merger activity, consistent with the statutory mandate to identify and prevent anticompetitive mergers.      

Regrettably, under the leadership of Chair Lina M. Khan, the FTC has taken unprecedented steps to undermine the well-understood HSR framework. As I wrote recently:

For decades, parties proposing mergers that are subject to statutory Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act pre-merger notification requirements have operated under the understanding that:

1. The FTC and U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) will routinely grant “early termination” of review (before the end of the initial 30-day statutory review period) to those transactions posing no plausible competitive threat; and

2. An enforcement agency’s decision not to request more detailed documents (“second requests”) after an initial 30-day pre-merger review effectively serves as an antitrust “green light” for the proposed acquisition to proceed.

Those understandings, though not statutorily mandated, have significantly reduced antitrust uncertainty and related costs in the planning of routine merger transactions. The rule of law has been advanced through an effective assurance that business combinations that appear presumptively lawful will not be the target of future government legal harassment. This has advanced efficiency in government, as well; it is a cost-beneficial optimal use of resources for DOJ and the FTC to focus exclusively on those proposed mergers that present a substantial potential threat to consumer welfare.

Two recent FTC pronouncements (one in tandem with DOJ), however, have generated great uncertainty by disavowing (at least temporarily) those two welfare-promoting review policies. Joined by DOJ, the FTC on Feb. 4 announced that the agencies would temporarily suspend early terminations, citing an “unprecedented volume of filings” and a transition to new leadership. More than six months later, this “temporary” suspension remains in effect.

Citing “capacity constraints” and a “tidal wave of merger filings,” the FTC subsequently published an Aug. 3 blog post that effectively abrogated the 30-day “green lighting” of mergers not subject to a second request. It announced that it was sending “warning letters” to firms reminding them that FTC investigations remain open after the initial 30-day period, and that “[c]ompanies that choose to proceed with transactions that have not been fully investigated are doing so at their own risk.”

The FTC’s actions interject unwarranted uncertainty into merger planning and undermine the rule of law. Preventing early termination on transactions that have been approved routinely not only imposes additional costs on business; it hints that some transactions might be subject to novel theories of liability that fall outside the antitrust consensus.

The FTC’s merger-review reign of error continues. Most recently, it released a policy guidance statement that effectively transforms the commission into a merger regulator whose assent is required for a specific category of mergers. This policy is at odds with HSR, which is designed to facilitate merger reviews, not to serve as a regulatory-approval mechanism. As the FTC explains in its Oct. 25 statement(citation to 1995 Statement omitted) (approved by a 3-2 vote, with Commissioners Noah Joshua Phillips and Christine S. Wilson dissenting):

On July 21, 2021, the Commission voted to rescind the 1995 Policy Statement on Prior Approval and Prior Notice Provisions (“1995 Statement”). The 1995 Statement ended the Commission’s then-longstanding practice of incorporating prior approval and prior notice provisions in Commission orders addressing mergers. With the rescission of the 1995 statement, the Commission returns now to its prior practice of routinely requiring merging parties subject to a Commission order to obtain prior approval from the FTC before closing any future transaction affecting each relevant market for which a violation was alleged. . . .

In addition, from now on, in matters where the Commission issues a complaint to block a merger and the parties subsequently abandon the transaction, the agency will engage in a case-specific determination as to whether to pursue a prior approval order, focusing on the factors identified below with respect to use of broader prior approval provisions. The fact that parties may abandon a merger after litigation commences does not guarantee that the

Commission will not subsequently pursue an order incorporating a prior approval provision. . . .
In some situations where stronger relief is needed, the Commission may decide to seek a prior approval provision that covers product and geographic markets beyond just the relevant product and geographic markets affected by the merger. No single factor is dispositive; rather, the Commission will take a holistic view of the circumstances when determining the length and breadth of prior approval provisions. [Six factors listed include the nature of the transaction; the level of market concentration; the degree to which the transaction increases concentration; the degree to which one of the parties pre-merger likely had market power; the parties’ history of acquisitiveness; and evidence of anticompetitive market dynamics.]

The Oct. 25 Statement is highly problematic in several respects. Its oversight requirements may discourage highly effective consent decree “fixes” of potential mergers, leading to wasteful litigation—or, alternatively, the abandonment of efficient transactions. What’s more, the threat of FTC prior approval orders (based on multiple criteria subject to manipulation by the FTC), even when parties abandon a proposed transaction (and thus, effectively have “done nothing”), smacks of unwarranted regulation of future corporate plans of disfavored firms, raising questions of fundamental fairness.

All told, the new requirements, combined with the FTC’s policies to end early terminations and to stop “greenlighting” routine merger transactions after a 30-day review, are yet signs that the well-understood HSR consensus has been unilaterally abandoned by the FTC, based on purely partisan commission votes, despite the lack of any public consultation. The FTC’s abrupt and arbitrary merger-review-related actions will harm the economy by discouraging welfare-promoting consolidations. These actions also fly in the face of sound public administration.  

Conclusion

The FTC continues to move from its historic role of antitrust enforcer to that of antitrust regulator at warp speed, based on a series of 3-2 votes. In particular, the commission’s abandonment of a well-established bipartisan approach to HSR policy is particularly troublesome, given the new risks it creates for private parties considering acquisitions. These new risks will likely deter an unknown number of efficiency-enhancing, innovative combinations that could have benefited consumers and substantially strengthened the American economy.

Perhaps the imminent confirmation of Jonathan Kanter—an individual with many years of practical experience as a leading antitrust practitioner—to be assistant attorney general for antitrust will bring a more reasonable perspective to antitrust agency HSR policies. It may even convince a majority of the commission to return to the bipartisan HSR merger-review framework that has served the American economy well.

If not, perhaps congressional overseers might wish to investigate the implications for the American innovation economy and the rule of law stemming from the FTC’s de facto abandonment of HSR principles. Whether to fundamentally alter merger-review procedures should be up to Congress, not to three unelected officials.    

In Antitrust & Competition, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Merger Guidelines, Truth on the Market , , , , , , ,
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FTC Antitrust Enforcement and the Rule of Law

Alden Abbott —  9 August 2021

The language of the federal antitrust laws is extremely general. Over more than a century, the federal courts have applied common-law techniques to construe this general language to provide guidance to the private sector as to what does or does not run afoul of the law. The interpretive process has been fraught with some uncertainty, as judicial approaches to antitrust analysis have changed several times over the past century. Nevertheless, until very recently, judges and enforcers had converged toward relying on a consumer welfare standard as the touchstone for antitrust evaluations (see my antitrust primer here, for an overview).

While imperfect and subject to potential error in application—a problem of legal interpretation generally—the consumer welfare principle has worked rather well as the focus both for antitrust-enforcement guidance and judicial decision-making. The general stability and predictability of antitrust under a consumer welfare framework has advanced the rule of law. It has given businesses sufficient information to plan transactions in a manner likely to avoid antitrust liability. It thereby has cabined uncertainty and increased the probability that private parties would enter welfare-enhancing commercial arrangements, to the benefit of society.

In a very thoughtful 2017 speech, then Acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Andrew Finch commented on the importance of the rule of law to principled antitrust enforcement. He noted:

[H]ow do we administer the antitrust laws more rationally, accurately, expeditiously, and efficiently? … Law enforcement requires stability and continuity both in rules and in their application to specific cases.

Indeed, stability and continuity in enforcement are fundamental to the rule of law. The rule of law is about notice and reliance. When it is impossible to make reasonable predictions about how a law will be applied, or what the legal consequences of conduct will be, these important values are diminished. To call our antitrust regime a “rule of law” regime, we must enforce the law as written and as interpreted by the courts and advance change with careful thought.

The reliance fostered by stability and continuity has obvious economic benefits. Businesses invest, not only in innovation but in facilities, marketing, and personnel, and they do so based on the economic and legal environment they expect to face.

Of course, we want businesses to make those investments—and shape their overall conduct—in accordance with the antitrust laws. But to do so, they need to be able to rely on future application of those laws being largely consistent with their expectations. An antitrust enforcement regime with frequent changes is one that businesses cannot plan for, or one that they will plan for by avoiding certain kinds of investments.

That is certainly not to say there has not been positive change in the antitrust laws in the past, or that we would have been better off without those changes. U.S. antitrust law has been refined, and occasionally recalibrated, with the courts playing their appropriate interpretive role. And enforcers must always be on the watch for new or evolving threats to competition.  As markets evolve and products develop over time, our analysis adapts. But as those changes occur, we pursue reliability and consistency in application in the antitrust laws as much as possible.

Indeed, we have enjoyed remarkable continuity and consensus for many years. Antitrust law in the U.S. has not been a “paradox” for quite some time, but rather a stable and valuable law enforcement regime with appropriately widespread support.

Unfortunately, policy decisions taken by the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) leadership in recent weeks have rejected antitrust continuity and consensus. They have injected substantial uncertainty into the application of competition-law enforcement by the FTC. This abrupt change in emphasis undermines the rule of law and threatens to reduce economic welfare.

As of now, the FTC’s departure from the rule of law has been notable in two areas:

  1. Its rejection of previous guidance on the agency’s “unfair methods of competition” authority, the FTC’s primary non-merger-related enforcement tool; and
  2. Its new advice rejecting time limits for the review of generally routine proposed mergers.

In addition, potential FTC rulemakings directed at “unfair methods of competition” would, if pursued, prove highly problematic.

Rescission of the Unfair Methods of Competition Policy Statement

The FTC on July 1 voted 3-2 to rescind the 2015 FTC Policy Statement Regarding Unfair Methods of Competition under Section 5 of the FTC Act (UMC Policy Statement).

The bipartisan UMC Policy Statement has originally been supported by all three Democratic commissioners, including then-Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. The policy statement generally respected and promoted the rule of law by emphasizing that, in applying the facially broad “unfair methods of competition” (UMC) language, the FTC would be guided by the well-established principles of the antitrust rule of reason (including considering any associated cognizable efficiencies and business justifications) and the consumer welfare standard. The FTC also explained that it would not apply “standalone” Section 5 theories to conduct that would violate the Sherman or Clayton Acts.

In short, the UMC Policy Statement sent a strong signal that the commission would apply UMC in a manner fully consistent with accepted and well-understood antitrust policy principles. As in the past, the vast bulk of FTC Section 5 prosecutions would be brought against conduct that violated the core antitrust laws. Standalone Section 5 cases would be directed solely at those few practices that harmed consumer welfare and competition, but somehow fell into a narrow crack in the basic antitrust statutes (such as, perhaps, “invitations to collude” that lack plausible efficiency justifications). Although the UMC Statement did not answer all questions regarding what specific practices would justify standalone UMC challenges, it substantially limited business uncertainty by bringing Section 5 within the boundaries of settled antitrust doctrine.

The FTC’s announcement of the UMC Policy Statement rescission unhelpfully proclaimed that “the time is right for the Commission to rethink its approach and to recommit to its mandate to police unfair methods of competition even if they are outside the ambit of the Sherman or Clayton Acts.” As a dissenting statement by Commissioner Christine S. Wilson warned, consumers would be harmed by the commission’s decision to prioritize other unnamed interests. And as Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips stressed in his dissent, the end result would be reduced guidance and greater uncertainty.

In sum, by suddenly leaving private parties in the dark as to how to conform themselves to Section 5’s UMC requirements, the FTC’s rescission offends the rule of law.

New Guidance to Parties Considering Mergers

For decades, parties proposing mergers that are subject to statutory Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act pre-merger notification requirements have operated under the understanding that:

  1. The FTC and U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) will routinely grant “early termination” of review (before the end of the initial 30-day statutory review period) to those transactions posing no plausible competitive threat; and
  2. An enforcement agency’s decision not to request more detailed documents (“second requests”) after an initial 30-day pre-merger review effectively serves as an antitrust “green light” for the proposed acquisition to proceed.

Those understandings, though not statutorily mandated, have significantly reduced antitrust uncertainty and related costs in the planning of routine merger transactions. The rule of law has been advanced through an effective assurance that business combinations that appear presumptively lawful will not be the target of future government legal harassment. This has advanced efficiency in government, as well; it is a cost-beneficial optimal use of resources for DOJ and the FTC to focus exclusively on those proposed mergers that present a substantial potential threat to consumer welfare.

Two recent FTC pronouncements (one in tandem with DOJ), however, have generated great uncertainty by disavowing (at least temporarily) those two welfare-promoting review policies. Joined by DOJ, the FTC on Feb. 4 announced that the agencies would temporarily suspend early terminations, citing an “unprecedented volume of filings” and a transition to new leadership. More than six months later, this “temporary” suspension remains in effect.

Citing “capacity constraints” and a “tidal wave of merger filings,” the FTC subsequently published an Aug. 3 blog post that effectively abrogated the 30-day “green lighting” of mergers not subject to a second request. It announced that it was sending “warning letters” to firms reminding them that FTC investigations remain open after the initial 30-day period, and that “[c]ompanies that choose to proceed with transactions that have not been fully investigated are doing so at their own risk.”

The FTC’s actions interject unwarranted uncertainty into merger planning and undermine the rule of law. Preventing early termination on transactions that have been approved routinely not only imposes additional costs on business; it hints that some transactions might be subject to novel theories of liability that fall outside the antitrust consensus.

Perhaps more significantly, as three prominent antitrust practitioners point out, the FTC’s warning letters states that:

[T]he FTC may challenge deals that “threaten to reduce competition and harm consumers, workers, and honest businesses.” Adding in harm to both “workers and honest businesses” implies that the FTC may be considering more ways that transactions can have an adverse impact other than just harm to competition and consumers [citation omitted].

Because consensus antitrust merger analysis centers on consumer welfare, not the protection of labor or business interests, any suggestion that the FTC may be extending its reach to these new areas is inconsistent with established legal principles and generates new business-planning risks.

More generally, the Aug. 6 FTC “blog post could be viewed as an attempt to modify the temporal framework of the HSR Act”—in effect, an effort to displace an implicit statutory understanding in favor of an agency diktat, contrary to the rule of law. Commissioner Wilson sees the blog post as a means to keep investigations open indefinitely and, thus, an attack on the decades-old HSR framework for handling most merger reviews in an expeditious fashion (see here). Commissioner Phillips is concerned about an attempt to chill legal M&A transactions across the board, particularly unfortunate when there is no reason to conclude that particular transactions are illegal (see here).

Finally, the historical record raises serious questions about the “resource constraint” justification for the FTC’s new merger review policies:

Through the end of July 2021, more than 2,900 transactions were reported to the FTC. It is not clear, however, whether these record-breaking HSR filing numbers have led (or will lead) to more deals being investigated. Historically, only about 13 percent of all deals reported are investigated in some fashion, and roughly 3 percent of all deals reported receive a more thorough, substantive review through the issuance of a Second Request. Even if more deals are being reported, for the majority of transactions, the HSR process is purely administrative, raising no antitrust concerns, and, theoretically, uses few, if any, agency resources. [Citations omitted.]

Proposed FTC Competition Rulemakings

The new FTC leadership is strongly considering competition rulemakings. As I explained in a recent Truth on the Market post, such rulemakings would fail a cost-benefit test. They raise serious legal risks for the commission and could impose wasted resource costs on the FTC and on private parties. More significantly, they would raise two very serious economic policy concerns:

First, competition rules would generate higher error costs than adjudications. Adjudications cabin error costs by allowing for case-specific analysis of likely competitive harms and procompetitive benefits. In contrast, competition rules inherently would be overbroad and would suffer from a very high rate of false positives. By characterizing certain practices as inherently anticompetitive without allowing for consideration of case-specific facts bearing on actual competitive effects, findings of rule violations inevitably would condemn some (perhaps many) efficient arrangements.

Second, competition rules would undermine the rule of law and thereby reduce economic welfare. FTC-only competition rules could lead to disparate legal treatment of a firm’s business practices, depending upon whether the FTC or the U.S. Justice Department was the investigating agency. Also, economic efficiency gains could be lost due to the chilling of aggressive efficiency-seeking business arrangements in those sectors subject to rules. [Emphasis added.]

In short, common law antitrust adjudication, focused on the consumer welfare standard, has done a good job of promoting a vibrant competitive economy in an efficient fashion. FTC competition rulemaking would not.

Conclusion

Recent FTC actions have undermined consensus antitrust-enforcement standards and have departed from established merger-review procedures with respect to seemingly uncontroversial consolidations. Those decisions have imposed costly uncertainty on the business sector and are thereby likely to disincentivize efficiency-seeking arrangements. What’s more, by implicitly rejecting consensus antitrust principles, they denigrate the primacy of the rule of law in antitrust enforcement. The FTC’s pursuit of competition rulemaking would further damage the rule of law by imposing arbitrary strictures that ignore matter-specific considerations bearing on the justifications for particular business decisions.

Fortunately, these are early days in the Biden administration. The problematic initial policy decisions delineated in this comment could be reversed based on further reflection and deliberation within the commission. Chairwoman Lina Khan and her fellow Democratic commissioners would benefit by consulting more closely with Commissioners Wilson and Phillips to reach agreement on substantive and procedural enforcement policies that are better tailored to promote consumer welfare and enhance vibrant competition. Such policies would benefit the U.S. economy in a manner consistent with the rule of law.

In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, Apple, Error Costs, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Mergers & Acquisitions, Platforms, Section 5, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Going Back to Antitrust Basics

Jonathan M. Barnett —  1 July 2021

Advocates of legislative action to “reform” antitrust law have already pointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia’s dismissal of the state attorneys general’s case and the “conditional” dismissal of the Federal Trade Commission’s case against Facebook as evidence that federal antitrust case law is lax and demands correction. In fact, the court’s decisions support the opposite implication. 

The Risks of Antitrust by Anecdote

The failure of a well-resourced federal regulator, and more than 45 state attorney-general offices, to avoid dismissal at an early stage of the litigation testifies to the dangers posed by a conclusory approach toward antitrust enforcement that seeks to unravel acquisitions consummated almost a decade ago without even demonstrating the factual predicates to support consideration of such far-reaching interventions. The dangers to the rule of law are self-evident. Irrespective of one’s views on the appropriate direction of antitrust law, this shortcut approach would substitute prosecutorial fiat, ideological predilection, and popular sentiment for decades of case law and agency guidelines grounded in the rigorous consideration of potential evidence of competitive harm. 

The paucity of empirical support for the exceptional remedial action sought by the FTC is notable. As the district court observed, there was little systematic effort made to define the economically relevant market or provide objective evidence of market power, beyond the assertion that Facebook has a market share of “in excess of 60%.” Remarkably, the denominator behind that 60%-plus assertion is not precisely defined, since the FTC’s brief does not supply any clear metric by which to measure market share. As the court pointed out, this is a nontrivial task in multi-sided environments in which one side of the potentially relevant market delivers services to users at no charge.  

While the point may seem uncontroversial, it is important to re-appreciate why insisting on a rigorous demonstration of market power is critical to preserving a coherent body of law that provides the market with a basis for reasonably anticipating the likelihood of antitrust intervention. At least since the late 1970s, courts have recognized that “big is not always bad” and can often yield cost savings that ultimately redound to consumers’ benefit. That is: firm size and consumer welfare do not stand in inherent opposition. If courts were to abandon safeguards against suits that cannot sufficiently define the relevant market and plausibly show market power, antitrust litigation could easily be used as a tool to punish successful firms that prevail over competitors simply by being more efficient. In other words: antitrust law could become a tool to preserve competitor welfare at the expense of consumer welfare.

The Specter of No-Fault Antitrust Liability

The absence of any specific demonstration of market power suggests deficient lawyering or the inability to gather supporting evidence. Giving the FTC litigation team the benefit of the doubt, the latter becomes the stronger possibility. If that is the case, this implies an effort to persuade courts to adopt a de facto rule of per se illegality for any firm that achieves a certain market share. (The same concept lies behind legislative proposals to bar acquisitions for firms that cross a certain revenue or market capitalization threshold.) Effectively, any firm that reached a certain size would operate under the presumption that it has market power and has secured or maintained such power due to anticompetitive practices, rather than business prowess. This would effectively convert leading digital platforms into quasi-public utilities subject to continuous regulatory intervention. Such an approach runs counter to antitrust law’s mission to preserve, rather than displace, private ordering by market forces.  

Even at the high-water point of post-World War II antitrust zealotry (a period that ultimately ended in economic malaise), proposals to adopt a rule of no-fault liability for alleged monopolization were rejected. This was for good reason. Any such rule would likely injure consumers by precluding them from enjoying the cost savings that result from the “sweet spot” scenario in which the scale and scope economies of large firms are combined with sufficiently competitive conditions to yield reduced prices and increased convenience for consumers. Additionally, any such rule would eliminate incumbents’ incentives to work harder to offer consumers reduced prices and increased convenience, since any market share preserved or acquired as a result would simply invite antitrust scrutiny as a reward.

Remembering Why Market Power Matters

To be clear, this is not to say that “Big Tech” does not deserve close antitrust scrutiny, does not wield market power in certain segments, or has not potentially engaged in anticompetitive practices.  The fundamental point is that assertions of market power and anticompetitive conduct must be demonstrated, rather than being assumed or “proved” based largely on suggestive anecdotes.  

Perhaps market power will be shown sufficiently in Facebook’s case if the FTC elects to respond to the court’s invitation to resubmit its brief with a plausible definition of the relevant market and indication of market power at this stage of the litigation. If that threshold is satisfied, then thorough consideration of the allegedly anticompetitive effect of Facebook’s WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions may be merited. However, given the policy interest in preserving the market’s confidence in relying on the merger-review process under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, the burden of proof on the government should be appropriately enhanced to reflect the significant time that has elapsed since regulatory decisions not to intervene in those transactions.  

It would once have seemed mundane to reiterate that market power must be reasonably demonstrated to support a monopolization claim that could lead to a major divestiture remedy. Given the populist thinking that now leads much of the legislative and regulatory discussion on antitrust policy, it is imperative to reiterate the rationale behind this elementary principle. 

This principle reflects the fact that, outside collusion scenarios, antitrust law is typically engaged in a complex exercise to balance the advantages of scale against the risks of anticompetitive conduct. At its best, antitrust law weighs competing facts in a good faith effort to assess the net competitive harm posed by a particular practice. While this exercise can be challenging in digital markets that naturally converge upon a handful of leading platforms or multi-dimensional markets that can have offsetting pro- and anti-competitive effects, these are not reasons to treat such an exercise as an anachronistic nuisance. Antitrust cases are inherently challenging and proposed reforms to make them easier to win are likely to endanger, rather than preserve, competitive markets.

In Antitrust & Competition, Facebook, Federal Trade Commission, Market Definition, Merger Guidelines, Monopolization, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Vertical Restraints , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Will Montesquieu Rescue Antitrust?

Jonathan M. Barnett —  25 August 2020

In an age of antitrust populism on both ends of the political spectrum, federal and state regulators face considerable pressure to deploy the antitrust laws against firms that have dominant market shares. Yet federal case law makes clear that merely winning the race for a market is an insufficient basis for antitrust liability. Rather, any plaintiff must show that the winner either secured or is maintaining its dominant position through practices that go beyond vigorous competition. Any other principle would inhibit the competitive process that the antitrust laws are designed to promote. Federal judges who enjoy life tenure are far more insulated from outside pressures and therefore more likely to demand evidence of anticompetitive practices as a predicate condition for any determination of antitrust liability.

This separation of powers between the executive branch, which prosecutes alleged infractions of the law, and the judicial branch, which polices the prosecutor, is the simple genius behind the divided system of government generally attributed to the eighteenth-century French thinker, Montesquieu. The practical wisdom of this fundamental principle of political design, which runs throughout the U.S. Constitution, can be observed in full force in the current antitrust landscape, in which the federal courts have acted as a bulwark against several contestable enforcement actions by antitrust regulators.

In three headline cases brought by the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission since 2017, the prosecutorial bench has struck out in court. Under the exacting scrutiny of the judiciary, government litigators failed to present sufficient evidence that a dominant firm had engaged in practices that caused, or were likely to cause, significant anticompetitive effects. In each case, these enforcement actions, applauded by policymakers and commentators who tend to follow “big is bad” intuitions, foundered when assessed in light of judicial precedent, the factual record, and the economic principles embedded in modern antitrust law. An ongoing suit, filed by the FTC this year after more than 18 months since the closing of the targeted acquisition, exhibits similar factual and legal infirmities.

Strike 1: The AT&T/Time-Warner Transaction

In response to the announcement of AT&T’s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, the DOJ filed suit in 2017 to prevent the formation of a dominant provider in home-video distribution that would purportedly deny competitors access to “must-have” content. As I have observed previously, this theory of the case suffered from two fundamental difficulties. 

First, content is an abundant and renewable resource so it is hard to see how AT&T+TW could meaningfully foreclose competitors’ access to this necessary input. Even in the hypothetical case of potentially “must-have” content, it was unclear whether it would be economically rational for post-acquisition AT&T regularly to deny access to other distributors, given that doing so would imply an immediate and significant loss in licensing revenues without any clearly offsetting future gain in revenues from new subscribers.

Second, home-video distribution is a market lapsing rapidly into obsolescence as content monetization shifts from home-based viewing to a streaming environment in which consumers expect “anywhere, everywhere” access. The blockbuster acquisition was probably best understood as a necessary effort to adapt to this new environment (already populated by several major streaming platforms), rather than an otherwise puzzling strategy to spend billions to capture a market on the verge of commercial irrelevance. 

Strike 2: The Sabre/Farelogix Acquisition

In 2019, the DOJ filed suit to block the $360 million acquisition of Farelogix by Sabre, one of three leading airline booking platforms, on the ground that it would substantially lessen competition. The factual basis for this legal diagnosis was unclear. In 2018, Sabre earned approximately $3.9 billion in worldwide revenues, compared to $40 million for Farelogix. Given this drastic difference in market share, and the almost trivial share attributable to Farelogix, it is difficult to fathom how the DOJ could credibly assert that the acquisition “would extinguish a crucial constraint on Sabre’s market power.” 

To use a now much-discussed theory of antitrust liability, it might nonetheless be argued that Farelogix posed a “nascent” competitive threat to the Sabre platform. That is: while Farelogix is small today, it may become big enough tomorrow to pose a threat to Sabre’s market leadership. 

But that theory runs straight into a highly inconvenient fact. Farelogix was founded in 1998 and, during the ensuing two decades, had neither achieved broad adoption of its customized booking technology nor succeeded in offering airlines a viable pathway to bypass the three major intermediary platforms. The proposed acquisition therefore seems best understood as a mutually beneficial transaction in which a smaller (and not very nascent) firm elects to monetize its technology by embedding it in a leading platform that seeks to innovate by acquisition. Robust technology ecosystems do this all the time, efficiently exploiting the natural complementarities between a smaller firm’s “out of the box” innovation with the capital-intensive infrastructure of an incumbent. (Postscript: While the DOJ lost this case in federal court, Sabre elected in May 2020 not to close following similarly puzzling opposition by British competition regulators.) 

Strike 3: FTC v. Qualcomm

The divergence of theories of anticompetitive risk from market realities is vividly illustrated by the landmark suit filed by the FTC in 2017 against Qualcomm. 

The litigation pursued nothing less than a wholesale reengineering of the IP licensing relationships between innovators and implementers that underlie the global smartphone market. Those relationships principally consist of device-level licenses between IP innovators such as Qualcomm and device manufacturers and distributors such as Apple. This structure efficiently collects remuneration from the downstream segment of the supply chain for upstream firms that invest in pushing forward the technology frontier. The FTC thought otherwise and pursued a remedy that would have required Qualcomm to offer licenses to its direct competitors in the chip market and to rewrite its existing licenses with device producers and other intermediate users on a component, rather than device, level. 

Remarkably, these drastic forms of intervention into private-ordering arrangements rested on nothing more than what former FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen once appropriately called a “possibility theorem.” The FTC deployed a mostly theoretical argument that Qualcomm had extracted an “unreasonably high” royalty that had potentially discouraged innovation, impeded entry into the chip market, and inflated retail prices for consumers. Yet these claims run contrary to all available empirical evidence, which indicates that the mobile wireless device market has exhibited since its inception declining quality-adjusted prices, increasing output, robust entry into the production market, and continuous innovation. The mismatch between the government’s theory of market failure and the actual record of market success over more than two decades challenges the policy wisdom of disrupting hundreds of existing contractual arrangements between IP licensors and licensees in a thriving market. 

The FTC nonetheless secured from the district court a sweeping order that would have had precisely this disruptive effect, including imposing a “duty to deal” that would have required Qualcomm to license directly its competitors in the chip market. The Ninth Circuit stayed the order and, on August 11, 2020, issued an unqualified reversal, stating that the lower court had erroneously conflated “hypercompetitive” (good) with anticompetitive (bad) conduct and observing that “[t]hroughout its analysis, the district court conflated the desire to maximize profits with an intent to ‘destroy competition itself.’” In unusually direct language, the appellate court also observed (as even the FTC had acknowledged on appeal) that the district court’s ruling was incompatible with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Aspen Skiing Co. v. Aspen Highlands Skiing Corp., which strictly limits the circumstances in which a duty to deal can be imposed. In some cases, it appears that additional levels of judicial review are necessary to protect antitrust law against not only administrative but judicial overreach.

Axon v. FTC

For the most explicit illustration of the interface between Montesquieu’s principle of divided government and the risk posed to antitrust law by cases of prosecutorial excess, we can turn to an unusual and ongoing litigation, Axon v. FTC.

The HSR Act and Post-Consummation Merger Challenges

The HSR Act provides regulators with the opportunity to preemptively challenge acquisitions and related transactions on antitrust grounds prior to those transactions having been consummated. Since its enactment in 1976, this statutory innovation has laudably increased dealmakers’ ability to close transactions with a high level of certainty that regulators would not belatedly seek to “unscramble the egg.” While the HSR Act does not foreclose this contingency since regulatory failure to challenge a transaction only indicates current enforcement intentions, it is probably fair to say that M&A dealmakers generally assume that regulators would reverse course only in exceptional circumstances. In turn, the low prospect of after-the-fact regulatory intervention encourages the efficient use of M&A transactions for the purpose of shifting corporate assets to users that value those assets most highly.

The FTC’s Belated Attack on the Axon/Vievu Acquisition

Dealmakers may be revisiting that understanding in the wake of the FTC’s decision in January 2020 to challenge the acquisition of Vievu by Axon, each being a manufacturer of body-worn camera equipment and related data-management software for law enforcement agencies. The acquisition had closed in May 2018 but had not been reported through HSR since it fell well below the reportable deal threshold. Given a total transaction value of $7 million, the passage of more than 18 months since closing, and the insolvency or near-insolvency of the target company, it is far from obvious that the Axon acquisition posed a material competitive risk that merits unsettling expectations that regulators will typically not challenge a consummated transaction, especially in the case of what is a micro-sized nebula in the M&A universe. 

These concerns are heightened by the fact that the FTC suit relies on a debatably narrow definition of the relevant market (body-camera equipment and related “cloud-based” data management software for police departments in large metropolitan areas, rather than a market that encompassed more generally defined categories of body-worn camera equipment, law enforcement agencies, and data management services). Even within this circumscribed market, there are apparently several companies that offer related technologies and an even larger group that could plausibly enter in response to perceived profit opportunities. Despite this contestable legal position, Axon’s court filing states that the FTC offered to settle the suit on stiff terms: Axon must agree to divest itself of the Vievu assets and to license all of Axon’s pre-transaction intellectual property to the buyer of the Vievu assets. This effectively amounts to an opportunistic use of the antitrust merger laws to engage in post-transaction market reengineering, rather than merely blocking an acquisition to maintain the pre-transaction status quo.

Does the FTC Violate the Separation of Powers?

In a provocative strategy, Axon has gone on the offensive and filed suit in federal district court to challenge on constitutional grounds the long-standing internal administrative proceeding through which the FTC’s antitrust claims are initially adjudicated. Unlike the DOJ, the FTC’s first stop in the litigation process (absent settlement) is not a federal district court but an internal proceeding before an administrative law judge (“ALJ”), whose ruling can then be appealed to the Commission. Axon is effectively arguing that this administrative internalization of the judicial function violates the separation of powers principle as implemented in the U.S. Constitution. 

Writing on a clean slate, Axon’s claim is eminently reasonable. The fact that FTC-paid personnel sit on both sides of the internal adjudicative process as prosecutor (the FTC litigation team) and judge (the ALJ and the Commissioners) locates the executive and judicial functions in the hands of a single administrative entity. (To be clear, the Commission’s rulings are appealable to federal court, albeit at significant cost and delay.) In any event, a court presented with Axon’s claim—as of this writing, the Ninth Circuit (taking the case on appeal by Axon)—is not writing on a clean slate and is most likely reluctant to accept a claim that would trigger challenges to the legality of other similarly structured adjudicative processes at other agencies. Nonetheless, Axon’s argument does raise important concerns as to whether certain elements of the FTC’s adjudicative mechanism (as distinguished from the very existence of that mechanism) could be refined to mitigate the conflicts of interest that arise in its current form.

Conclusion

Antitrust vigilance certainly has its place, but it also has its limits. Given the aspirational language of the antitrust statutes and the largely unlimited structural remedies to which an antitrust litigation can lead, there is an inevitable risk of prosecutorial overreach that can betray the fundamental objective to protect consumer welfare. Applied to the antitrust context, the separation of powers principle mitigates this risk by subjecting enforcement actions to judicial examination, which is in turn disciplined by the constraints of appellate review and stare decisis. A rich body of federal case law implements this review function by anchoring antitrust in a decisionmaking framework that promotes the public’s interest in deterring business practices that endanger the competitive process behind a market-based economy. As illustrated by the recent string of failed antitrust suits, and the ongoing FTC litigation against Axon, that same decisionmaking framework can also protect the competitive process against regulatory practices that pose this same type of risk.

In Administrative Law, Antitrust & Competition, Apple, Constitutional Law, Draft Joint Vertical Merger Guidelines: What’s in, what’s out — and do we need them anyway?, Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, Justice Department, Merger Guidelines, Mergers & Acquisitions, Platforms, Regulation, Symposia, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market, Wireless , , , , ,
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Josh Wright begins making his mark at the FTC by pushing cost-benefit analysis

Geoffrey Manne —  4 February 2013

Although it probably flew under almost everyone’s radar, last week Josh issued his first Concurring Statement as an FTC Commissioner.  The statement came in response to a seemingly arcane Notice of Proposed Rulemaking relating to Hart-Scott-Rodino Premerger Notification Rules:

The proposed rules also establish a procedure for the automatic withdrawal of an HSR filing when filings are made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announcing that a transaction has been terminated.

The proposed rulemaking itself isn’t enormously significant, but Josh’s statement lays down a marker that indicates (as anyone could have predicted) that he intends to do everything he can to improve the agency and its process.

The rule, as suggested above, would automatically withdraw an HSR filing whenever transacting parties filed certain notices with the SEC announcing the termination of a deal.  You may recall that the Hertz/Dollar Thrifty deal had been in the works for at least five years when it finally closed.  When Hertz withdrew its tender offer in October 2011, it did not withdraw its HSR filing.  As reported at the time, Hertz withdrew its bid over difficulty securing FTC approval, which had plagued other offers for Thrifty:

In a sign of frustration, Mr. Thompson said that the company had spent some $30 million over the last few years dealing with the barrage of takeover offers.

Obviously, given the difficulty of securing FTC approval and the costs imposed by the uncertainty it created, there was real benefit to Hertz (and perhaps Thrifty, for that matter) from receiving a decision from the FTC without meanwhile tying up the company’s resources, restraining its decision- and deal-making abilities, complicating negotiations and weakening its credit by maintaining a stalled-but-pending merger.  So the deal was withdrawn, but the HSR filing was not.

In August 2012 the parties re-initiated the merger following ongoing consultations by Hertz with the FTC, and, in November 2012 — a full year after the deal was withdrawn (and a year and a half after the HSR filing) — the FTC approved the deal.

But, understandably, FTC staff don’t want to be wasting resources reviewing hypothetical transactions, and so, following on the heels of the Hertz/Dollar Thrifty deal, wrote the proposed rule to ensure that it never happens again.

Except it didn’t happen in Hertz because, after all, the deal was eventually made. According to Josh, in fact, the situation intended to be avoided by the rule has never arisen:

The proposed rulemaking appears to be a solution in search of a problem. The Federal Register notice states that the proposed rules are necessary to prevent the FTC and DOJ from “expend[ing] scarce resources on hypothetical transactions.” Yet, I have not to date been presented with evidence that any of the over 68,000 transactions notified under the HSR rules have required Commission resources to be allocated to a truly hypothetical transaction. Indeed, it would be surprising to see firms incurring the costs and devoting the time and effort associated with antitrust review in the absence of a good faith intent to proceed with their transaction.

This isn’t to say (and Josh doesn’t say) that the proposed rule is a bad idea, just that, given the apparently negligible benefits of the rule, the costs could easily outweigh the benefits.

Which is why Josh’s Statement is important. What Josh is asking for is not that the rule be scrapped, but simply that, before adopting the rule, the FTC weigh its costs and benefits. And as Josh points out, there could indeed be some costs:

The proposed rules, if adopted, could increase the costs of corporate takeovers and thus distort the market for corporate control. Some companies that had complied with or were attempting to comply with a Second Request, for example, could be forced to restart their antitrust review, leading to significant delays and added expenses. The proposed rules could also create incentives for firms to structure their transactions less efficiently and discourage the use of tender offers. Finally, the proposed new rules will disproportionately burden U.S. public companies; the Federal Register notice acknowledges that the new rules will not apply to tender offers for many non-public and foreign companies.

Given these concerns, I hope that interested parties will avail themselves of the opportunity to submit public comments so that the Commission can make an informed decision at the conclusion of this process.

What is surprising is not that Josh suggested that there might be unanticipated costs to such a rule, nor that cost-benefit analysis be applied. Rather, what’s surprising is that the rest of the Commission didn’t sign on. Why is that surprising? Well, because cost-benefit analysis is not only sensible, it’s consistent with the Obama Administration’s stated regulatory approach. Executive Order 13563 requires that:

Each agency must, among other things:  (1) propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that its benefits justify its costs (recognizing that some benefits and costs are difficult to quantify) . . . In applying these principles, each agency is directed to use the best available techniques to quantify anticipated present and future benefits and costs as accurately as possible.

Unfortunately, as Berin Szoka has pointed out,

The FCC, FTC and many other regulatory agencies aren’t required to do cost-benefit analysis at all.  Because these are “independent agencies”—creatures of Congress rather than part of the Executive Branch (like the Department of Justice)—only Congress can impose cost-benefit analysis on agencies.  A bipartisan bill, the Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act (S. 3486), would have allowed the President to impose the same kind of cost-benefit analysis on independent regulatory agencies as on Executive Branch agencies, including review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for “significant” rulemakings (those with $100 million or more in economic impact, that adversely affect sectors of the economy in a material way, or that create “serious inconsistency” with other agencies’ actions). . . . yet the bill has apparently died . . . .

Legislation or not, it is the Commission’s responsibility to ensure that the rules it enacts will actually be beneficial (it is a consumer protection agency, after all). The staff, presumably, did a perfectly fine job writing the rule they were asked to write. Josh’s point is simply that it isn’t clear the rule should be adopted because it isn’t clear that the benefits of doing so would outweigh the costs.

It may have happened before, but I can’t recall an FTC Commissioner laying down the cost-benefit-analysis gauntlet and publicly calling for consistent cost-benefit review at the Commission, even of seemingly innocuous (but often not actually innocuous), technical rules.

This is exactly the sort of thing that those of us who extolled Josh’s appointment hoped for, and I’m delighted to see him pushing this kind of approach right out of the gate.  No doubt he rocked some boats and took some heat for it. Good. That means he’s on the right track.

In Antitrust & Competition, Justice Department, Mergers & Acquisitions, Regulation, Securities, Tying , , , , , , , , ,
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