Antitrust Agencies Reaffirm Their Commitment To Rooting Out "Roll-Up" Strategies

The antitrust agencies' focus on "serial acquisitions" or "roll-ups" shows no signs of abating. After numerous public comments from agency leaders concerning the cumulative impact on competition of a series of previously unreported and undetected transactions (with specific attention paid to the involvement of private equity companies), the adoption of new merger guidelines that call out serial acquisitions for the first time, and the initiation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of its first challenge to participants in an alleged roll-up strategy, the FTC announced, during its open commission meeting on May 23, 2024, the publication of a joint FTC/U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) formal request for information on serial acquisitions across all sectors of the economy. The announcement follows a previous request for information by the FTC, DOJ and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) concerning transactions in the healthcare industry. FTC officials at