The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice issued new joint guidelines on vertical mergers last week, the first major overhaul from the two federal antitrust agencies in more than 35 years. They replace the DOJ’s 1984 Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines, which the agency withdrew in January.
Vertical mergers are those that combine firms or assets at different stages of the same supply chain. The guidelines detail the techniques and main types of evidence that the agencies typically use to predict whether vertical transactions may substantially reduce competition. They’re designed to help businesses, antitrust practitioners and others by increasing transparency into the agencies’ principal analytical techniques, practices and enforcement policies for evaluating vertical transactions, the agencies said in a release.
“These new Vertical Merger Guidelines are an important step forward in maintaining vigorous antitrust enforcement, and reaffirm our commitment to challenge vertical mergers that are anticompetitive and would harm American consumers,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons.
