To strengthen enforcement, the US Department of Justice (DOJ)
and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are undertaking a review of
the Horizontal Merger Guidelines, last revised by the Obama
administration in 2010, and the Vertical Merger Guidelines, issued
in 2020 by the Trump administration.
The Biden DOJ and FTC on January 18, 2022, jointly issued
a request for information (RFI), soliciting
public comment on revisions to “modernize” the
analytical framework used to assess mergers. Comments are due March
21, after which the agencies have said they will publish proposed
guidelines for further comment, with a goal of finalizing new
guidelines before the end of 2022.
This process follows President Joe Biden's July 2021
issuance of an executive order, which called on the antitrust
agencies to evaluate whether the Horizontal and Vertical Merger
Guidelines required revision.
