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Trustbusting Kicks Into Higher Gear
Two more signs that antitrust is a big focus on both sides of the aisle.

By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jason Karaian, Sarah Kessler, Stephen Gandel, Michael J. de la Merced, Lauren Hirsch and Ephrat Livni

Breaking up
The Department of Justice yesterday filed its first antitrust action since President Biden took office, to block the proposed merger of Aon and Willis Towers Watson. It argued that combining two of the three largest insurance brokers would create an anticompetitive “behemoth.” The $30 billion transaction would “eliminate substantial head-to-head competition and likely lead to higher prices and less innovation,” the department’s complaint said.

The action came on an already big day for American antitrust. Lina Khan, 32, was sworn in as chair of the Federal Trade Commission, “the youngest in the agency’s history and its most progressive in at least a generation,” write The Times’s David McCabe and Cecilia Kang. Khan is a Big Tech critic whose views on Amazon changed how many think about monopoly in the internet era. She will now have power to reshape the rules: Her leadership role signals that the Biden administration will act on the trustbusting promises made on the campaign trail.

Right now, cracking down on corporations is one of the few things that unites a divided government. Democrats and Republicans at the state and federal level are calling for new antitrust rules and challenging Big Tech in court for alleged abuses of competition law. Notably, the very progressive Khan has some staunch Republican support. And the review of the insurance brokers’ merger began last year, when Donald Trump — another vocal Big Tech critic — was in office. Doug Melamed, a Stanford Law professor and the former acting assistant attorney general of the D.O.J.’s antitrust division, told DealBook that if the complaint’s analysis of the market is accurate, the government “almost” had to challenge the combination.

More tough antitrust enforcement officials may be on the way. The top antitrust position at the D.O.J. is vacant, and one rumored favorite to take over in a permanent capacity is the lawyer Jonathan Sallet. Sallet, a senior counsel for a coalition of state attorneys general going after Google, has faced criticism from progressives for refusing to ally with Republicans in that effort. Another top contender and vocal Google critic, Jonathan Kanter, has gained praise from progressive groups like Public Citizen and MoveOn.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/business/dealbook/antitrust-aon-khan.html