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Review of Consummated Mergers: Are Changes in Store?

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Review of Consummated Mergers: Are Changes in Store? COVER STORIES Antitrust , Vol. 34, No. 3, Summer 2020. © 2020 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association. Review of Consummated Mergers: Are Changes in Store? BY TERRY CALVANI AND JUSTIN HEDGE EVIEW OF CONSUMMATED MERGERS tion merger review is the only game in town. In some other has moved from being a paragraph of antitrust jurisdictions, the substantive merger law and the pre-merger texts to the front pages. 1 This new currency for notification requirement are coextensive. The Merger Regu - the topic is, in part, attributable to the attention lation of the EU, for example, requires certain transactions to politicians 2 and “progressive” interest groups be notified. The European Commission may then challenge Rhave given it. 3 COVID -19 has only added fuel to the fire. The only notifiable transactions. 12 Thus, some jurisdictions chal - press, 4 public interest groups, 5 and congressional leaders have lenge only consummated transactions, while others challenge entered the fray, and the federal agencies have indicated an only notifiable transactions. increasing interest in post-consummation review. 6 Most con - In jurisdictions with pre-merger notification programs, cretely, the FTC has initiated a study of consummated merg - review of consummated transactions generally falls into one ers by large technology companies. 7 of two categories. 13 The first includes those deals that were In light of these developments, the ABA Antitrust Law not reportable in the first place, e.g., small deals that did not Section’s Competition/Consumer Protection Policy and cross the filing thresholds. The second includes deals that the North American Comments Task Force recently published a agency only examined later but then decided to challenge. discussion paper on the topic. 8 The document, written for an international audience, sets out the various policy issues that Consummated Transactions Not Subject to competition enforcement agencies confront as they consid - Pre-Merger Review er the benefits and costs of post-consummation merger Small, unreportable deals clearly can be anticompetitive. And enforcement. That ABA paper merits attention by those one easily could reduce this universe of cases simply by interested in this timely subject. This modest note focuses decreasing the filing threshold. But as the Task Force Report specifically on the treatment of the issue under current U.S. recognizes, this presents a trade-off, as the costs to both the law. enforcement agency and the parties associated with filing The topic is not new. For many years, the two U.S. en - and review often are very significant. Those costs can impair forcement agencies have reminded the competition law com - the value of smaller transactions. The difficult question is munity that the review of non-reportable transactions is an where to draw that line—sufficiently low to catch most trans - active part of their enforcement agenda. 9 Lest companies for - actions of interest, yet sufficiently high to avoid the costs asso - get the message, the agencies have made good on their com - ciated with unnecessary reviews. The Task Force Report rec - mitment through enforcement actions. 10 Yet one senses that ognizes that an appropriately-set threshold would generate a the current attention is more than business as usual. group of unreviewed mergers that merited examination. Although the Task Force did not opine on where to draw the A Brief Background line, it did recommend that research be undertaken to explore Almost all merger review in the United States was ex post this issue further, and this makes perfect sense rather than until the passage of Title II of the Antitrust Improvements relying on supposition or guesswork. Act of 1976 (HSR Act). One of the purposes of that law was to remedy the difficulty of “unscrambling the eggs” posed by Consummated Transactions Previously Subject to ex post review. 11 Most, although not all, antitrust regimes Pre-Merger Review have followed the U.S. example. For those that have not, and The more difficult issue is presented by those transactions do not have premerger notification review, post-consumma - that were reviewed, but then at a later time, the authorities decide they have an interest in re-reviewing them. This can Terry Calvani is Senior Advisor, Brunswick Group LLC, Washington, D.C. result from a perceived error in the first review or because cir - Justin Hedge is Counsel, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, LLP, Washington, cumstances have changed and the transaction, while consid - D.C. ered benign or even procompetitive at the time of the first review, is now thought to be problematic. 14 28 · ANTITRUST These possible scenarios present two important legal of the HSR Act itself permits challenging reported mergers issues: how long after a transaction’s close can it be chal - at any time: lenged, and at what point in time should the effect of the Any action taken by the [agencies] or any failure of the transaction be evaluated? Federal Trade Commission or the Assistant Attorney General With respect to the first issue, in theory a case could be to take . action under this section shall not bar any pro - brought at some considerable period after closing if it is con - ceeding or any action . at any time under any other sec - sidered an ongoing violation of Section 7 of the Clayton tion of this Act or any other provision of law. 22 Act. (Private actions, of course, would be limited in the avail - able damages by the Clayton Act statute of limitations. 15 ) Yet, the statutory language is less than clear: The use of the Practically speaking, however, enforcement activity post-clos - term “other,” for example, may simply address Section 2 of ing tends to occur in short order, as those adversely affected, the Sherman Act. In certain circumstances, that law could for example, are happy to point to new facts and circum - address the problem. stances as the transaction and its effects become more pub - Second, the Supreme Court’s decision in du Pont , appears lic and visible to market participants. to support Patel’s view, 23 though as noted that case is dated The main outlier case for post-hoc government enforce - and antedates pre-merger review. ment is United States v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. ,16 Even if there were more aggressive review of consummat - where the Supreme Court upheld the Justice Department’s ed transactions, there is the important second issue—an equi - challenge to stock acquisitions by du Pont some 30 years table one—of whether the legality of such a merger is to be later. 17 This decision gave rise to what is often called the assessed under facts at the time of the merger or, instead, “Time of Suit Doctrine”—the concept that suggested merg - under facts prevailing at the time of challenge. Patel reads the ers can be challenged whenever the anticompetitive effects of du Pont decision as holding that “when an agency brings a a transaction ripen. While the 63-year-old du Pont decision Clayton Act Section 7 claim challenging a merger, it can rely has not been overruled, it was written more than 20 years on market conditions at the time of suit, rather than conditions before the introduction of the U.S. pre-merger notification at the time of the merger .”24 system. It is unclear whether the Court would affirm a broad Timothy Muris and Jonathan Nuechterlein take a differ - application of the decision in the fundamentally changed ent view in a recent article. 25 Fundamentally, they note that merger system of today, but in any event the decision has not re-reviewing earlier transactions would create “a regime— played an important role in the case law in the intervening alien to U.S. law—of no-fault antitrust liability, ”26 relying on years. At a minimum, du Pont suggests that at least in some an array of commentators including former FTC Chairman contexts, challenges years after consummation can be viable. Robert Pitofsky (not a conservative on enforcement by any As one would expect, the Time of Suit Doctrine finds means). 27 new champions in those who seek an aggressive review of Muris and Nuechterlein offer a number of policy argu - consummated transactions—principally but not exclusively ments in support of their position that merit examination. in technology industries—where the merged entity is per - Like the Task Force Report, they suggest that the prospect of ceived to be exercising market power. Menesh Patel, a vocal re-reviewing transactions would inject uncertainty into the proponent of this position, poses the question: “Should the mergers and acquisitions market, which undermines the antitrust agencies more readily challenge mergers that they incentives to pursue efficiency enhancing deal. They also themselves previously reviewed and cleared pursuant to the highlight the real risk that, appreciating the opportunity for existing federal merger review scheme? ”18 Patel answers in the another bite of the apple, staff may simply postpone making affirmative. 19 But he does suggest a limiting principle: difficult calls, leaving a decision for a more robust evidentiary [Enforcement agencies] should challenge a previously environment. Muris and Nuechterlein also focus on diffi - reviewed and cleared merger only if . [t]he preponderance culties inherent in proving that the “but-for-world” would be of the . evidence shows that the merger has or is likely to more competitive than the actual world. The Task Force substantially lessen competition; and . [t]he agencies rea - Report also questions whether merger challenges years after sonably believe there is a remedy that would correct the 20 consummation would be fair to the companies and their merger’s competitive harm.
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