Competition Matters

This week, we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the opening of the first FTC regional office. According to the Commission’s 1918 Annual Report, the FTC first established three branch offices in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco in order to handle the agency’s growing workload.

Longfellow said “It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.” We agree, especially when it comes to designing effective merger remedies—ones that maintain competition at pre-merger levels so that the merger does not lead to higher prices, lower quality, or reduced innovation. From the perspective of the Bureau of Competition and the Commission, getting it right takes time.

July is Military Consumer Month, so it’s the perfect time to consider the unique challenges of America’s military members and their families. Among the many sacrifices made by military families are frequent relocations, typically every 2 or 3 years. Moving to a new duty station often means that the member’s spouse must find a new job in a new state. For spouses who need a state-issued license to work, each move can involve paperwork, fees, and delays in order to obtain a new license.

More than ten years ago, the FTC and the Department of Justice published a joint report outlining some concerns about impediments to competition in the residential real estate industry.

Most antitrust practitioners are attuned to advising clients about the antitrust risk that a proposed acquisition may violate Section 7 of the Clayton Act. But counsel and clients must also be conscious of the risks of sharing information with a competitor before and during merger negotiations—a concern that remains until the merger closes.

When Congress passed the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, it created minimum dollar thresholds to limit the burden of premerger reporting. In 2000, it amended the HSR statute to require the annual adjustment of these thresholds based on the change in gross national product. As a result, reportability under the Act changes from year to year as the statutory thresholds adjust. The PNO fields many questions about the upcoming adjustments to the HSR thresholds from parties whose transactions may take place around the time of the revisions.

When Acting Chairman Ohlhausen launched the FTC’s Economic Liberty Task Force in early 2017 to shine a spotlight on occupational licensing, the goal was not only to advocate for needed reforms. She also wanted to give a voice to the millions of American workers and consumers – especially military families – whose lives and livelihoods are impacted by misguided policies.

The staff of the Premerger Notification Office processes, reviews, and answers inquiries related to around two thousand transactions, involving roughly 4,000 HSR filings, each year. The number one priority of the PNO is to process incoming HSR filings in a timely fashion so Bureau of Competition and Antitrust Division litigation staff can review filings of interest and we can clear non-problematic transactions for closing as quickly as possible.

If you’re a competition policy wonk (a title we both wear proudly), we probably don’t need to convince you to stop by or tune in to the FTC’s upcoming November 7 roundtable discussion to explore ongoing research about the effects of occupational licensing on competition, consumers, and the workforce. For the rest of you…please read on, and give us a chance to try.