Antitrust Merger Enforcement Update: One Year Into The Trump Administration

At the one year anniversary of the Trump administration, antitrust merger enforcement remains similar to the Obama administration, but it is still early to judge given the delays in antitrust appointments and given the DOJ's lawsuit against the vertical AT&T/Time Warner transaction, the first vertical merger litigation in decades.  Below are a few of the recent developments that have impacted merger enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as European regulators:

US Updates

DOJ Leadership in Place; Three FTC Vacancies Remain Unfilled. The new head of the DOJ Antitrust Division just started in October, while we wait for the Senate to confirm Trump's four recent nominations to fill FTC Commissioner roles. It is unclear whether the DOJ's challenge of AT&T/Time Warner represents a shift towards more populist antitrust enforcement or is simply a result of politics.