The Federal Trade Commission has just announced its annual adjustment to the notification thresholds that determine whether proposed transactions may trigger a filing obligation under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended. The corresponding adjustments to the HSR filing fee schedule also were included in the announcement. The adjusted notification thresholds and filing-fee schedule will apply to transactions that close on or after the effective date, which will be 30 days after publication in the Federal Register and no earlier than 26 February 2024.

On 18 December 2023, the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jointly issued their highly anticipated final version of the 2023 Merger Guidelines . The issuance of the Guidelines follows the agencies’ release of draft guidelines in July and the conclusion of a public notice-and-comment period. The Guidelines set out how the agencies assess whether mergers and acquisitions threaten anticompetitive harm in violation of US antitrust laws.

Most notably, the newly issued Guidelines retained the lower thresholds for establishing presumptions of anticompetitive harm — including if the merger gives the combined firm more than 30% market share. Additionally, the Guidelines outline a holistic approach for analyzing vertical mergers.

On Tuesday, 23 January 2024 we are hosting an in-person client event in our New York office on Generative AI: Harnessing the Power and Mitigating Risk. The program includes an exciting in-house counsel panel featuring key speakers from Calix, Wolters Kluwer and Tiffany & Co. We’ll also hear from a cross-discipline Baker team who will discuss legal and regulatory considerations and mitigating risk when using Gen. AI,

In the ongoing debate concerning data broker regulation, trade-offs between competition and privacy are not always holistically appreciated. This article — originally published in Competition Policy International’s TechReg Chronicle — examines the importance of data protection for individual privacy and access to data for competition, discusses the role of data brokers in data privacy and sharing, and reviews existing, new, and proposed regulations of data brokers who now face additional and varying restrictions in state and federal privacy and consumer protection laws that will increase their compliance costs.

The recent proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, particularly generative AI tools, has brought these questions to the forefront of ongoing conversations about the role that AI will play in the marketplace. As an advocate for and enforcer of consumer protection laws, the US Federal Trade Commission recently offered reminders and recommendations for companies offering digital products and AI tools.

On 27 June 2023, the Federal Trade Commission, with the concurrence of the Assistant Attorney General for the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, announced proposed changes to the premerger notification form and associated instructions and rules that implement the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act. The proposed changes represent an expansion and reorganization of the information collected on the HSR form.

The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice announced that it reached a settlement in its litigation challenge against ASSA ABLOY AB’s proposed USD 4.3 billion acquisition of Spectrum Brand Holding Inc.’s Hardware and Home Improvement division. The settlement, which came in the middle of trial and is now subject to court approval, is the first negotiated settlement under DOJ Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter. Notably, comments from the judge during the trial suggested skepticism towards the DOJ’s position and potential difficulties for the DOJ in winning its case. Without the settlement, this case may have been next in a recent number of DOJ litigation losses.

Baker McKenzie, in partnership with Accenture LLP, invites in-house corporate legal teams and interested business stakeholders to join us in person on Thursday, 1 June 2023, to discuss how various legal departments are addressing AI and how companies are managing these challenges and risks. The event will take place in the Baker McKenzie Chicago office.

On 27 January 2023, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued its unanimous (3-0) decision in FTC v. Simple Health Plans, LLC, et al., No. 21-13116. This matter stemmed from an individual defendant’s emergency motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction that a district court had issued under Sections 13(b) and 19 of the FTC Act. The district court denied the emergency motion, and the defendant appealed.

The Federal Trade Commission has just announced its annual adjustment to the notification thresholds that determine whether proposed transactions may trigger a filing obligation under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended, which will apply to transactions that close on or after 27 February 2023.