Antitrust & Trade Regulation News

On February 2, 2004, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a report entitled "Horizontal Merger Investigation Data, Fiscal Years 1996-2003" (the "Report"). The Report analyzes seven years of data detailing how the FTC reacted to proposed mergers but deals only with mergers where the FTC issued a second request for information. The tables attached to the Report examined the ratio of mergers challenged by the FTC to those that were not challenged, and provides interesting information on how those numbers vary based on market concentration, number of significant competitors, "hot documents," and customer complaints. The FTC and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice use the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index ("HHI") to measure industry concentration. The HHI is calculated by adding the squares of the market shares of all firms that compete in a particular market. In order to gauge the effect a proposed merger will have on