Federal legislative proposals that would have repealed the antitrust exemption enjoyed by freight railroads and would have permitted the U.S. Department of Justice to sue Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members for price fixing will not pass the Senate as part of the Surface Transportation Bill. Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin) last month introduced two…
The authors are, respectively, partner and associate, at the firm of Labaton Sucharow LLP, New York City. Mr. Himes, who also co-chairs the firm’s Antitrust Practice Group, is the former Antitrust Bureau Chief, Office of the Attorney General of New York. Firm attorneys are counsel for plaintiffs in the Potatoes case discussed in this paper….
The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has blocked two mergers in the past several months, in each case after filing a lawsuit against the merging parties. The first case involved a relatively small transaction in the digital tax business involving H&R Block and 2nd Story Software. The second case was the high-profile proposed acquisition by…
On February 3, the White House announced President Barack Obama’s intention to nominate Bill Baer to serve as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. There was much speculation that Baer would be named to head the Antitrust Division after Sharis A. Pozen, the current acting assistant attorney general for antitrust,…
Despite a U.S. Department of Justice decision to clear the deal, the European Commission (EC) today blocked the proposed merger of NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse. The EC determined that the combination would have resulted in a quasi-monopoly in the area of European financial derivatives traded globally on exchanges. The two exchanges control more than…
The Department of Justice today announced a total of $548 million in fines resulting from a second round of charges in the government’s ongoing investigation into collusive activity in the auto parts industry. Two more Japanese companies have agreed to plead guilty for their roles in multiple price fixing and bid rigging conspiracies in the…
Less than six months after her appointment as Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Sharis A. Pozen has announced her resignation, effective as of April 30, 2012. Late yesterday, the Justice Department issued a statement announcing the departure. There was no word on who would replace Pozen. However,…
In the past six months since Google’s public disclosure of its Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust investigation, much of the debate around the issue has been focused on the evolution of search–how it has changed over the past decade, how information is presented to users, and where information comes from to provide users with the…
Having filed over 100 cases in the last 12 months, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division was especially active in 2011. The vast majority of those cases were criminal matters; however, 2011 will most likely be remembered for the Antitrust Division’s merger enforcement efforts. The Antitrust Division reviewed a number of mega-mergers in 2011. While…
The prospects for the merger of Deutsche Börse AG and NYSE Euronext are looking a little brighter, since the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division conditionally approved the transaction yesterday. U.S. antitrust approval is a major hurdle; however, the combination of the two leading stock exchange groups, which was announced in February, still requires clearance…
