FTC vertical merger assessment policy
Executive Summary
Federal Trade Commission is likely to increase its ex-post assessments of vertical mergers, particularly in instances where it chose not to intervene, according to Commissioner William Kovacic. "Previous FTC practice had been, with rare exceptions, not to discuss decisions not to prosecute," he notes during a panel at the BIO International Convention May 7. "Increasingly, by reference to experience of our counterparts overseas, the decision has been much more frequently to reveal why the commission chose not to act, especially when it imposed significant informational demands on outsiders." For example, FTC issued a statement discussing why the Genzyme/Novazyme merger did not raise antitrust concerns in 2004 (1"The Pink Sheet" Jan. 19, 2004, p. 37). "One wants to see, especially by reference to actual events, whether the intuitions that guided the decision in the first place were correct," Kovacic says. "And I think that's particularly important in the high tech area where in many instances we're making judgments based on the parties' representations and our own assessment of events about what's taking place"...
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