Merger guidelines

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The Merger guidelines are a set of internal rules promulgated by the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in conjunction with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These rules, which have been revised a number of times in the past four decades, govern the extent to which these two regulatory bodies will scrutinize and/or challenge a potential merger on grounds of market concentration or threat to competition within a relevant market.

The merger guidelines have sections governing both horizontal integration and vertical integration.

History of the Merger guidelines

The first merger guidelines set forth by the DOJ were the 1968 Merger Guidelines,^[1] which remained largely unchanged until 1982. The 1968 guidelines were developed by former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Dr. Donald Turner, an economist and lawyer with expertise in the field of industrial organization.^[2] These merger guidelines were criticized in some quarters as being overly concerned with issues of market structure such as barriers to entry and concentration ratios at the expense of efficiency and economies of scale.^[3] They were, however, a step forward in two ways: they gave more accurate advice to corporate management as to when and how mergers would be examined, and brought new economic ideas into antitrust enforcement, specifically the "structure-conduct-performance" model of industrial organization.^[2]

In 1982, Associate Attorney General Bill Baxter, under the authority of U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, released a new set of guidelines, which made heavier use of modern concepts of microeconomic theory, including the using the Herfindahl index to determine market concentration.^[4] The newer guidelines took a more favorable view of economies of scale and efficiency of production as rationales for integration.^[2] Moreover, they raised the level of market concentration necessary for the government to scrutinize mergers, effectively treating competition as a means to greater efficiency rather than as a goal in and of itself.^[5] This was quite a controversial approach at the time: some antitrust lawyers saw it as a loosening of previous restraints on corporate consolidation, and some State Attorneys General responded to Baxter's changes by tightening merger enforcement at the state level.^[3]

The guidelines were revised again in 1984.^[6] The only remaining portion of the 1984 guidelines which remains in effect is Section Four, which governs the examination of market effects of vertical integration. These guidelines were later replaced by the 1992 Merger Guidelines,^[7] which represented a fine-tuning of previously established tools and policies, such as the SSNIP test and rules governing the acquisition of failing firms. The 1992 Guidelines were revised in 1997, almost concurrently with the FTC's challenge of the Staples-Office Depot merger in federal court.

The 1997 Horizontal Merger Guidelines were replaced with the most recent version in 2010. This version was released on August 19, 2010^[8]. The 2010 Guidelines introduced the concept of "upward pricing pressure" resulting from a merger between competing firms.

Notes

1. ^ 1968 Merger Guidelines, from the U.S. Department of Justice website
2. ^ ^{a b c} Oliver E. Williamson, The Merger Guidelines of the U.S. Department of Justice-In Perspective. Accessed November 4, 2007.
3. ^ ^{a b} Remarks of Assistant Attorney General Charles A. James.
4. ^ Time magazine, "Guidelines for the Merger Thicket", June 28, 1982. Accessed September 12, 2007.
5. ^ William J. Kolasky and Andrew R. Dick, The Merger Guidelines and the Integration of Efficiencies into Antitrust Review of Horizontal Mergers, 10 June 2002. Accessed September 12, 2007.
6. ^ 1984 Merger Guidelines
7. ^ 1992 Merger Guidelines
8. ^ 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines

See also

• United States antitrust law
• Second request (law)

External links

• Merger guidelines documents:
  • 1968 Merger Guidelines
  • 1984 Merger Guidelines
  • 1984 Non-horizontal Merger Guidelines
  • 1992 Merger Guidelines
  • 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines, with April 8, 1997, Revisions to Section 4 on Efficiencies
  • 1997 Merger Guidelines
  • 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines
• Official DOJ commentary on the horizontal merger guidelines
• 20th anniversary of the 1982 merger guidelines
• FTC International antitrust coordinator Debra Valentine