Us Department Of Justice Merger Guidelines

Author : U. S. Department U.S. Department of Justice
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781544654577
Total Pages : 38 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (545 download)

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Download or read book Horizontal Merger Guidelines written by U. S. Department U.S. Department of Justice and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-03-13 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These Guidelines outline the principal analytical techniques, practices, and the enforcement policy of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (the "Agencies") with respect to mergers and acquisitions involving actual or potential competitors ("horizontal mergers") under the federal antitrust laws. The relevant statutory provisions include Section 7 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 18, Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1, 2, and Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45. Most particularly, Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers if "in any line of commerce or in any activity affecting commerce in any section of the country, the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly." The Agencies seek to identify and challenge competitively harmful mergers while avoiding unnecessary interference with mergers that are either competitively beneficial or neutral. Most merger analysis is necessarily predictive, requiring an assessment of what will likely happen if a merger proceeds as compared to what will likely happen if it does not. Given this inherent need for prediction, these Guidelines reflect the congressional intent that merger enforcement should interdict competitive problems in their incipiency and that certainty about anticompetitive effect is seldom possible and not required for a merger to be illegal.