U.S. Senate Approves New Top Antitrust Chief.

[elleng]

Source: NYT/Reuters

'(S)he would have challenged mergers that Bush antitrust enforcers allowed to go through, such as the merger of appliance rivals Whirlpool and Maytag in 2006.

Varney, a former commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, said she would work with the FTC, which also enforces antitrust law, on issues like drug companies' settlements with other companies to delay production of cheaper, generic drugs.

She said she would support legislation to ban the practice if courts determine the settlements are legal.

She also said she would support a bill to strip railroads of antitrust exemptions.'


Read more: http://nytimes.com/reuters/2009/04/20/us/politics/politics-us-congress-varney.html

[PM Martin]

1. Also to be considered:

media consolidation and the "banking"/financial service monopolies.

[annabanana]

2. How can we get her to start trust busting

the media conglomerates?

[Lucky Luciano]

3. I was wondering what might happen with the massive

consolidation in big pharma.

MRK for SGP and
PFE for WYE seem like good candidates for anti-trust considerations.

[elleng]

4. I agree.

Problem with pharma may be in determining the 'market.' Has to be done early in the analysis, and pharma's market may be seen to be world-wide.

[Vidar]

5. We need another Teddy Roosevelt in that position.

[No Elephants]

6. Merger of rivals is one thing. However, there is also an issue of mergers in which

the companies are not rivals, but a giant is the result of the merger.

Before Reagan, regulations required government review of those mergers. (The government could allow the merger or fight it, but the review was mandatory.)

During the Reagan era, the dollar amounts increased, so mergers could escape review unless two really huge companies were merging with each other. I am not sure, but I think this kind of merger no longer requires any government review.

In any event, mergers that make a company "too big to fail" need to be reviewed thoughtfully, whether or not the two companies are rivals.