The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

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US Antitrust Enforcers Are Chilling Big Mergers
ByLeah Nylen and Michelle F Davis
May 10, 2023 at 9:00 AM EDT

The US government’s aggressive stance on antitrust is chilling merger activity among the country’s biggest companies, with some deals never making it past the boardroom as executives fear lengthy and expensive approval processes.

US enforcers have roughly doubled their efforts to block mergers under the Biden administration: in the 12 months through September, the antitrust agencies filed complaints against a record 13 transactions compared to an average of six per year over the previous five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Though deals involving US companies have steadily increased, the recent pace of interventions by the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission has stunted that growth: The agencies are also claiming credit for another 26 mergers that they say were abandoned in the face of antitrust investigations, some of which were pulled before they were even made public.

The approach has discouraged some companies from pursuing unions they would’ve leapt at in the past, according to dozens of conversations with M&A advisers, corporate executives, former regulators and antitrust practitioners. Many of them described an environment that’s generally hostile to dealmaking, even for transactions that they wouldn’t have expected to raise antitrust concerns. While antitrust laws haven’t changed, the stepped-up enforcement means dealmaking has gotten costlier, as well as more uncertain and time-consuming, they said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-10/m-a-deal-pace-slows-as-biden-administration-cracks-down-on-antitrust?srnd=premium&sref=XLA0GJqR