Friend of the Firm, Robert Connolly, former Chief of the Philadelphia Field Office of the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice, now resident in DLA Piper’s Philadelphia Office last week penned an important contribution for MLEX regarding DOJ’s evolving policy regarding compliance monitors: “The DOJ Antitrust Divsion’s policy on independent compliance monitors: is it misguided?”
Although still a distant second to monopoly, buyer power and monopsony are hot topics in the competition community. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), International Competition Network (ICN), and American Antitrust Institute (AAI) have studied monopsony and buyer power recently. The U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission pay more attention to buyer power in their 2010 merger guidelines than they did in their earlier guidelines. With growing buyer concentration in commodities such as coffee, tea, and cocoa, and among retailers, buyer power is a human rights issue. (Continue Reading)
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Allen Grunes shared his perspective with Bloomberg News regarding the proposed Publicis-Omnicom Merger. Click Below:
Allen Grunes was asked for his views on the proposed merger of AT&T and Leap Wireless International. (Grunes and Maurice Stucke were the authors of an influential antitrust analysis of the attempted AT&T/T-Mobile merger in 2011.) Please click on the linked article below:
The American Antitrust Institute, a Washington D.C. organization, has written a letter to the United States Sentencing Commission recommending that fines for antitrust violations be increased. The recommendation grows out of work done by Professors John Connor and Bob Lande, who have been studying whether the penalties (including fines, jail time, and civil liability) adequately deter would-be price fixers. Their study, which looks at a significant amount of data over many years, suggests that price fixing is under-deterred, and that it therefore can be a rational business decision for firms to illegally fix prices, even in the current era of large fines, big jail sentences and private treble damages cases. They specifically point out that while the Guidelines assume that price fixing raises prices by an average of 10% over what prices would be in a competitive market, there is evidence that this estimate is too low, and should be revised to 20%, if not higher.
http://www.antitrustinstitute.
Violations Occurred When Diller Acquired Voting Securities of The Coca Cola Company
WASHINGTON — Corporate investor Barry Diller will pay a $480,000 civil penalty to settle charges that he violated premerger reporting and waiting requirements when he acquired voting securities of The Coca Cola Company, the Department of Justice announced today.
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, at the request of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), filed a civil antitrust lawsuit today in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against Diller for violating the notification requirements of the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act of 1976. At the same time, the department filed a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, will settle the charges.
The HSR Act of 1976, an amendment to the Clayton Act, imposes notification and waiting period requirements on individuals and companies over a certain size before they consummate acquisitions resulting in holding stock or assets above a certain value, which at the time of Diller’s violations ranged from $63.4 million to $68.2 million and is currently $70.9 million.
Federal courts can assess civil penalties for premerger notification violations under the HSR Act in lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice. For a party in violation of the HSR Act the maximum civil penalty is $16,000 a day