In the year-plus since President Biden was inaugurated, there have been significant changes to antitrust policy and enforcement approaches. Perhaps most significantly, the President named a new Federal Trade Commission Chair, and since then the FTC has staked out a more aggressive antitrust enforcement agenda and reversed several FTC policies that the majority viewed as inhibiting the agency’s enforcement efforts. Key developments that may affect companies in the gaming, leisure, and hospitality industries are described below.
1. White House Executive Order on Competition In July, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy. The EO included 72 initiatives by more than a dozen federal agencies to address perceived competition issues across the economy, and established a White House Competition Council to monitor progress on facilitating and executing these initiatives.
In general, the EO announced a broad policy objective for increased antitrust enforcement. Among its specific provisions, the EO urges the FTC and DOJ to consider revamping their merger guidelines to, “address the consolidation of industry in many markets across the economy.” That same day, the new FTC Chair and the then-acting head of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division released a statement saying that the merger guidelines must “guide enforcers to review mergers with the skepticism the law demands. The current guidelines deserve a hard look to determine whether they are overly permissive.”
Combined, the EO and joint statement is a strong indication that the agencies will undertake a review of their merger guidelines to potentially update them. Any update is likely to result in a tightening of the agencies’ standards for assessing mergers, increasing the risks of merger challenges.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY ALEXIS J. GILMAN IN THE 2022 SPRING EDITION OF GAMING & LEISURE MAGAZINE.