Insights

Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson announced on February 24, 2025, that the FTC will create the agency’s “first-ever” labor task force, signaling the agency’s continued focus on competition in labor markets, answering an open question from companies as to the fate of the agency’s no-poach and non-compete enforcement priorities. On February 26 Chair Ferguson followed up on his announcement with a Directive Regarding Labor Markets Task Force, providing additional details on the task force and the agency’s priorities.

In the last days of the Biden Administration, the Antitrust Division (DOJ) took the rare step of bringing two separate enforcement actions relating to violations of the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act. The DOJ announced a record $5.6 million civil penalty for “gun jumping” in connection with a 2021 acquisition of a crude oil producer. Days later, the agency sued a private equity fund for violating the HSR rules by failing to make required notifications and omitting or altering required “Item 4” documents.

The pending overhaul of the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) rules faces a new challenge. Published in the Federal Register in November, the final HSR modifications were set to become effective on February 10, but late last week the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a local Chamber chapter, the Business Roundtable, and the American Investment Counsel filed a complaint seeking to block their implementation. While the complaint does not seek a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction, the case further highlights the expanded regulations and additional burden the agencies are seeking to impose on merging parties, and places a spotlight on the issue as the Trump Administration prepares to take control of the antitrust agencies.

The Federal Trade Commission has announced its annual updates to the thresholds and filing fees related to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (the HSR Act). These dollar thresholds are indexed annually based on changes in the U.S. gross national product and the Consumer Price Index.

The Federal Trade Commission announced its annual updates to the thresholds and filing fees related to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (the HSR Act) on Monday. These dollar thresholds are indexed annually based on changes in the U.S. gross national product and the Consumer Price Index.

This week, the Federal Trade Commission announced a massive overhaul of the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act’s rules and instructions for premerger filings to the U.S. antitrust agencies. The proposed rule represents the most significant revisions to the HSR process since its inception in 1976, vastly expanding the scope of information required to be submitted by parties. The proposed rules would impose significant additional substantive and procedural burdens, substantially increase the time and cost to prepare filings, and raise critical strategic questions for filing parties.

On Friday, February 3, DOJ announced in a press release that it has withdrawn support for three joint DOJ-FTC policy statements that explicitly describe certain “safety zones” applicable to information sharing among competitors and the formation of certain competitor collaborations (including healthcare provider joint ventures and accountable care organizations (ACOs)) that the antitrust agencies did not intend to prosecute. See 1993 Policy Statement, 1996 Policy Statement, 2011 Accountable Care Organizations. The FTC has not yet withdrawn its support for these statements and the DOJ does not apparently plan to issue new guidance, which may result in the agencies applying differing standards and, at a minimum, creates more uncertainty about how the agencies will evaluate conduct covered by these guidance documents.

The Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday the most significant changes to the jurisdictional thresholds and filing fees applicable to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (the HSR Act) in several decades.

After seeing the first decrease in the HSR thresholds in over a decade last year, the Federal Trade Commission announced today that it will increase the jurisdictional thresholds applicable to both the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (the HSR Act) and Section 8 of the Clayton Act. These dollar thresholds are indexed annually based on changes in the U.S. gross national product.

This week, a federal grand jury in Las Vegas, Nevada returned an indictment charging a health care staffing company and one of its former managers with entering into an unlawful agreement with a competing staffing company to allocate employee nurses as well as to fix nurses’ wages. This indictment comes on the heels of recent statements by Acting AAG Richard Powers and others in Antitrust Division leadership that the DOJ will continue to aggressively crack down on what it believes are unlawful no-poach agreements, and signals a continued focus both on no-poach and related issues as well as the healthcare industry more broadly.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) announced today that the agencies will stop granting “early termination” (ET) requests in premerger reviews so they can review the procedures for granting ET. The agencies describe this move as a “temporary suspension,” but did not provide any description of the procedures under review or a timeline for resumption of the normal process.

As if we needed further evidence of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. economy, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced yesterday that the minimum reporting threshold applicable to the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act will decrease from $94 million to $92 million for the coming year. The HSR Act requires that certain transactions be notified and subjected to review by the U.S. antitrust agencies prior to their consummation.