Each year, the federal antitrust agencies update the
notification thresholds for the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust
Improvements Act, or HSR Act. The HSR Act's notification
requirements apply to various types of acquisition transactions
– mergers, acquisitions, nonprofit affiliations, and certain
types of joint ventures – if the transaction meets a defined
size (valuation) threshold. Today, the Federal Trade Commission announced that the "size of
transaction" threshold at which an HSR filing is required will
increase from $70.9 million to $75.9 million.
The HSR Act is a "report and wait" statute; it
requires parties to certain proposed transactions to file a HSR
notification form with both the FTC and U.S. Department of Justice
and observe a statutory waiting period before consummating the
transaction. Parties are required to file notification under the
HSR Act, and therefore are subject to a waiting period, if the
value of the transaction meets a certain size or, in
