U.S. Antitrust Enforcers Release Proposed Revision of Merger Guidelines

The United States federal antitrust agencies (the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission) today released revised Horizontal Merger Guidelines – a document intended to set forth the process by which horizontal mergers are evaluated by the agencies and (in their view) should be evaluated by the courts. The Guidelines are open for public comment for 30 days, but are quite unlikely to change in any material way before they are finalized. The changes from the current Guidelines are significant and in general reflect a more aggressive approach to merger analysis than the previous Guidelines – but not really much difference from the actual practice of the agencies today.