In this Issue:
United States
1. FTC abandons challenge to Philadelphia hospital merger.
On March 1, 2021, the FTC, suffering its first loss in a hospital merger challenge since 2016, voted 4-0 to end its effort to stop the proposed $599 million merger of Philadelphia-area health care systems Jefferson Health and Albert Einstein Healthcare Network. The FTC’s decision comes about a month and a half after the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office dropped out of the joint challenge.
The FTC challenged the merger on the basis that it would hurt competition in the Philadelphia-area health care market, and after a defeat at the district court, told the appellate court that the judge had applied “faulty economic reasoning.” The FTC alleged that a combined network would control over 60% of the market for inpatient general acute care services in and around North Philadelphia and at least 45% of the market for those services in and around Montgomery County. The FTC alleged that t
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Acquisition of PGB by Global Automotive.
After conducting a detailed market study among manufacturers, competitors, and buyers of tires, ACM established that enough alternatives will remain in the market for tires for retailers. ACM expects that enough competitive pressure will continue to be exerted, and that the new combination will not raise prices or reduce the quality of services. ACM also assessed what the consequences would be for the market for replacement wheels. ACM has established that, in that market too, enough competition will remain. On March 10, 2021, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) cleared the acquisition of PGB by Global Automotive. Global Automotive and PBG are mainly active in the distribution of replacement tires and replacement wheels for cars and vans.
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WARSAW, March 2 (Reuters) - The chief executive of Polish regional newspaper publisher Polska Press has quit following its purchase by state-run oil refiner PKN Orlen, a takeover the opposition sees as part of efforts by the ruling party to assert control over the media.
Polska Press said in a statement released on Tuesday that CEO Dorota Stanek had submitted her resignation after PKN Orlen completed its takeover of the group from Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Passau.
PKN Orlen describes the deal as just a business transaction, but opposition political parties have portrayed it as part of a wider project by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party to tighten control of the media in the European Union member state.
Earlier this month, a broadcaster in Hungary came under fire for an advertisement the country’s media council deemed harmful to children. The ad in question, part of a campaign by an LGBT advocacy group, sympathetically depicted “rainbow families” and pushed back against anti-LGBT stereotypes. The media authority, run by members of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, announced it would take legal action against the broadcaster RTL Hungary for airing the ad.
The move was part of a broader strategy to suppress what Orbán and his allies decry as “LGBT ideology” imported from the West, and one in which Hungarian activists see parallels to events in nearby Poland, where the governing right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) and a network of outside groups have increasingly ramped up their own rhetoric and policy against the LGBT community.