Thursday, February 11, 2021
Marisa E. Poncia
Despite initial obstacles because of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 rounded out to be the busiest year for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) enforcement in the United States in nearly two decades. In the fourth quarter, US agencies challenged five transactions. November 2020 saw the most premerger filings in any month since 2001. Mergers and filings in the United States are predicted to remain at high levels into the new year in light of the current economic climate. The antitrust agencies have continued to maintain that their evaluation and investigation of anticompetitive harm will remain rigorous despite the uncertain times.
with is what types of policies would youtube have to put in place. or what types of policies government relaters would have to put in place to ensure the content remains appropriate for children. and speaking of government regulators, right, there is this top-to-bottom house probe. that s right. of google and big-tech competitors. is this part of that? many would argue that congress has abdicated its duty to regulate these guys? and by the way, google wants more regulation. i think this house subcommittee probe is sort of designed at addressing these big societal challenges. this is the first time the antitrust committee has done something like this in decades so they re really interested in going broad and deep on some of these question. you know, at the same time, this is a bit of a rorschach test. because congress is looking at it from a very different perspective than the antitrust agencies might be. that s true. we ll keep following it.
pressure for this kind of thing for a long time from democrats and republicans on capitol hill, and increasingly from some of the democrats running for the white house in 2020. but what we saw from the reporting this weekend is that the government s two major antitrust agencies privately have started divvying up the territory here, and what that suggests to us is the early makings of a potential review, potential investigation or other kinds of actions on the parts of government regarding big tech. heard privacy concern answer facebook. a number of them. but google and amazon are not social media. so what would the potential focus be? yeah. absolutely right. heard a lot ak privacy in silicon valley and a little less with respect to competition. the issue whether companies like google and amazon are too big and powerful and. it they wielded that dominance in their respective industries hurting competitive companies or harm consumers. we saw a flavor of this with