FTC Secures Record USD5.68 Million Gun-Jumping Penalty

On January 7, 2025, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced a record USD5.68m civil penalty to settle alleged pre-merger coordination in violation of the HSR Act. This settlement is the largest dollar penalty that has ever been imposed by the U.S. agencies for a gun-jumping violation.

The civil penalty resolves an FTC investigation into the coordination by the parties of certain business decisions, as well as access to competitively sensitive information, prior to satisfying the stand-still requirements of the HSR Act. The HSR Act provides for a penalty for each day that parties to a reportable transaction are in violation of the Act. In this case, the FTC alleges that the parties were in violation of the Act for 94 days, justifying the significant penalty.