Rethinking Merger Analysis: The 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines
The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines substantially revised and updated the Department of Justice 1984 Merger Guidelines, with respect to the analytic framework the government would use to evaluate horizontal mergers. The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines revised but did not depart substantially from that analytic framework. Earlier this year, the Biden administration indicated an intention to substantially revise the existing merger guidelines and depart significantly from the analytic framework of the 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines, and re-adopt the more structural approach of the Department of Justice’s 1968 and 1982/1984 Merger Guidelines. Host Bilal Sayyed sat down with Baker Botts Senior Counsel James Rill (Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, 1989-1992), Paul Denis and Jon Baker to discuss what led the antitrust agencies to move away from the structural approach the Biden Administration seems likely to re-adopt.
