June 9, 2021

Bad Blood at the FTC

Thomas Lambert

John Carreyrou’s marvelous book Bad Blood chronicles the rise and fall of Theranos, the one-time Silicon Valley darling that was revealed to be a house of cards.[1] Theranos’s Svengali-like founder, Elizabeth…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

June 3, 2021

Conflicting Missions: The Risks of the Digital Markets Unit to Competition and Innovation

Samuel Bowman & Aria Babu & Sam Dumitriu

The UK's Digital Markets Unit will combine the powers and operating structure of a narrow sector regulator with a cross-sector purview that is much closer to the CMA’s economy-wide reach.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

May 14, 2021

tl;dr - Lessons for the United States from the EU’s Approach to Antitrust

Geoffrey A. Manne & Samuel Bowman

Background... Some U.S. antitrust advocates, including members of Congress, recently have advocated the United States adopt a more European approach to antitrust policy. This comes as the European Commission itself…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

February 18, 2021

tl;dr - The Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act

Samuel Bowman & Geoffrey A. Manne & Dirk Auer

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) has introduced the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act (CALERA), sweeping legislation that, if enacted, would change the antitrust rules not just for Big Tech, but for the whole economy.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

February 1, 2021

Comments to FTC: ANPR Concerning Future Amendments to the HSR Rules

Dirk Auer & Geoffrey A. Manne & Samuel Bowman

ICLE comments filed Feb. 1, 2021, to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in response to the FTC's Advance Notice of Public Rulemaking concerning future amendments to the premerger notification rules under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

January 26, 2021

Ajit Pai Brought the FCC’s Media Ownership Rules into the Modern Age

Geoffrey A. Manne

Pai’s tenure at the FCC was marked by an abiding appreciation for the importance of competition, both as a guiding principle for new regulations and as a touchstone to determine when to challenge existing ones. Perhaps his greatest contribution to bringing competition to the forefront of the FCC’s mandate came in his work on media modernization.

Telecommunications

December 11, 2020

Facebook and the Pros and Cons of Ex Post Merger Reviews

Dirk Auer

The Federal Trade Commission and 46 state attorneys general (along with the District of Columbia and the Territory of Guam) filed their long-awaited complaints against Facebook Dec. 9. The crux of the arguments in…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

February 24, 2020

Comments of ICLE on the Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines (Matter Number P810034)

Geoffrey A. Manne & Kristian Stout

Although it is doubtless correct that the 1984 Nonhorizontal Merger Guidelines require updates in light of the last three decades of legal and economic developments, it is by no means…

Antitrust & Consumer Protection

March 29, 2019

Telecom regulators: Don’t get rolled by Rewheel

Eric Fruits

Will the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint make consumers better or worse off? A central question in the review of this merger—as it is in all merger reviews—is the likely effects that the transaction will have on consumers.

Antitrust & Consumer Protection