- Monaco take top spot in Ligue 1 with win at Rennes
- Madrid beat Villarreal to level Liga leaders Barca
- Thuram treble fires Inter past Torino and up to second
- 'Fight': defiant Trump jets in to site of rally shooting
- Mexico City's new mayor sworn in with pledges on water, housing
- Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Guardians maul Tigers in MLB playoff series opener
- Macron criticises Israel on Gaza, Lebanon operations
- French rugby player whistled but 'serene' on return amid ongoing rape case
- Retegui hat-trick fires five-star Atalanta to hammering of Genoa
- Heavyweights Australia, England off to World Cup winning starts
- Visiting UN refugee agency chief decries 'terrible crisis' in Lebanon
- Spinners come to party as England defeat Bangladesh at T20 World Cup
- Search continues for missing in deadly Bosnia floods
- Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- France's Auradou whistled on Pau return in Perpignan loss amid ongoing rape case
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Arsenal hit back in style after Southampton scare
- Hezbollah heir apparent Safieddine out of contact after strikes
- Liverpool stay top of Premier League as Arsenal, Man City win
- In dank Tour of Emilia, Pogacar shines in rainbow jersey
- DR Congo launches mpox vaccination drive, hoping to curb outbreak
- Trump returns to site of failed assassination
- Careless Leverkusen held to Bundesliga draw
- O'Brien's 'superstar' Kyprios posts landmark win on Arc weekend
- Liverpool suffer Alisson injury blow
- Habosi helps Racing beat Vannes before Auradou's playing return
- Thousands march in London in support of Palestinians, 1 year after Oct 7
- Israel readying response to Iran missile attack
- Schutt, Mooney help Australia beat Sri Lanka in Women's T20 World Cup
- Liverpool extend Premier League lead with win at Palace
- Djokovic 'shakes rust off' to make third round of Shanghai Masters
- 'Imperfect' PSG fighting on all fronts - Luis Enrique
- Struggling Pakistan look to thwart adaptable England
- Child 'trampled to death' in asylum seekers' Channel crossing: minister
- Gauff fights back to set up Beijing final against Muchova
- Guardiola claims Premier League won't delay season for Man City
- Israel to mark October 7 attack as Gaza war spreads
- Gauff fights back to reach China Open final
- Recovering Stokes ruled out of first Pakistan Test
- Hezbollah battles troops on border as Israel pounds Lebanon
- Alcaraz, Sinner breeze into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Bagnaia wins Japan MotoGP sprint to cut Martin's lead
- Alcaraz breezes into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- 'Bullet for democracy': Trump returns to site of rally shooting
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- South Korean cult-horror series 'Hellbound' returns at BIFF
- Nepalis fear more floods as climate change melts glaciers
- Honduras arrests environmentalist's alleged murderer
Dealmakers ponder what's next after tough Biden antitrust years
President Joe Biden's skeptical approach to corporate mergers has been a hallmark of his administration's business policy -- a stance generally expected to ease if Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Biden appointees like Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter have broadened the scope of government antitrust oversight to consider issues such as a deal's impact on workers and on potential new market entrants.
Dealmakers have complained of added costs from this heightened scrutiny, while Khan and Kanter insist they have deterred problematic deals.
But with the clock ticking on Biden's tenure, the antitrust and dealmaking universes have begun to ponder what comes next as voters weigh the candidacies of Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.
While a Trump win is broadly expected to result in less antitrust enforcement and more dealmaking than a Harris victory, even that outcome is not certain, as today's Republican coalition includes not just corporate interests but figures like Trump's running mate Senator JD Vance, who has praised Khan.
"There is a lot of uncertainty there," said New York University Professor Harry First. He said the populist tilt of some members of Trump's coalition "makes it hard to predict what will happen."
A Trump election win would be "slightly positive to very positive" for dealmaking, predicted a Wall Street banker, who spoke on condition that he not be identified. He cautioned that optimism over a potential shift under Trump should be tempered by worries over a renewed US-China trade war.
- 'Consuming competitors' -
Biden set an adversarial tone toward dealmaking early in his presidency, saying that too many big companies were "consuming their competitors." An executive order he signed in July 2021 promoted competition and included tougher antitrust enforcement.
Biden cast the approach as a needed pivot from a failed 40-year "experiment of letting giant corporations accumulate more and more power."
The appointment of Khan sent a clear message to the business world, including tech behemoths.
Khan shot to prominence following a 2017 academic article on Amazon that criticized antitrust enforcement for overlooking key priorities such as a deal's impact on workers and the potential for big companies -- not yet monopolies -- to discourage new competitors from emerging.
Khan and Kanter have signaled the importance of these issues, including in merger guidelines finalized in December 2023.
They have scored some litigation wins, including the unwinding of Illumina's acquisition of Grail in a case involving cancer detection tests; and a ruling this month that Google's search engine constituted a monopoly in a case originally brought by the Trump administration.
But the Biden administration has also suffered some major setbacks, losing a challenge to Microsoft's takeover of Activision Blizzard and to UnitedHealth Group's acquisition of Change Healthcare.
- Weighing risks -
Former FTC enforcement official Ryan Quillian has pointed to data that the current commission actually has filed fewer lawsuits than its predecessors. He argued in an October 2023 paper that the Biden administration's "rhetoric outpaces" its enforcement numbers.
Quillian, now a partner with Covington & Burling, said the agencies were focused on "rhetoric and process to deter" merger activity.
CEOs considering transactions now weigh the chance of antitrust enforcement "at the beginning of a deal," said the Wall Street banker, adding that "there is no question that clients think two or three times more about deals that are on the line."
The American Investment Council, a trade group for the private equity industry, has sharply criticized a Biden administration proposal to significantly increase pre-merger notification disclosures.
The proposed changes to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act would include details about the rationale of a transaction, projected revenue streams and corporate relationships.
The proposed rule "will make it far more costly to consummate such deals," slowing the American economy "to the detriment of the very consumers whom the antitrust laws are intended to benefit," the council said in September 2023 comments.
Those changes have yet to be finalized. The next administration will need to decide whether to uphold this policy, along with the 2023 merger guidelines, which would need to be adopted by US courts to have teeth.
Other questions concern pending lawsuits against tech giants Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook parent Meta, and whether to proceed with litigation or take another route, such as settlement or dismissal.
A.F.Rosado--PC