Needed: New Legal Ideas to Fight Megamergers

Posted by Bloomberg

Needed: New Legal Ideas to Fight Megamergers

By Joe Nocera

Makan Delrahim, the new head of the US Justice Department’s antitrust division, made a speech at the National Press Club on Thursday, and the reporters who covered it all focused on one thing: Was he signaling that he was planning to block the merger of AT&T Inc. with Time Warner Inc.?

Although Delrahim didn’t mention either company, his answer sure sounded like “yes.” But that wasn’t his main goal; rather, his purpose was to lay out the core principles that will guide antitrust policy under President Donald Trump. With a growing consensus among antitrust experts that the government has allowed too much concentration — a consensus with which I agree — those core principles are worth examining.

It turns out there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the approach Delrahim outlined strongly suggests that the Trump administration will give mergers closer scrutiny than the last two presidencies. The bad news is that he remains wedded to an outdated antitrust framework.

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