The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

Court Reinstates Lawsuits Alleging Collusion by Big Banks.  Lawsuits against 16 of the world’s largest banks alleging they colluded to manipulate the primary benchmark for global short-term interest rates were reinstated by a federal appeals court that decided that a district court judge had rejected the litigation too quickly.  Saying it wasn’t a close call, the Second Circuit  U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan restored lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages brought by investors in financial instruments mostly issued by the banks.  The appeals court said the claims of the plaintiffs had to be taken as true at this stage of the litigation and they had “plausibly alleged both antitrust violation and antitrust injury.”

Exclusive: U.S. Queries AB InBev on Distribution Incentives Amid Merger Probe.  U.S. antitrust officials are investigating Anheuser-Busch InBev over its new incentives that encourage independent distributors to sell more of its own beer brands at the expense of competing craft brews, according to sources.  Budweiser owner AB InBev has 45.8 percent of the U.S. beer market but has seen sales dwindle at least partially because of rising craft beer sales.  The U.S. Department of Justice last year probed AB InBev’s plan to buy distributors in response to craft brewers’ complaints that it aimed to curb competition.

Anthem CEO Says Cigna Deal Moving Forward with Antitrust Review.  Anthem Inc Chief Executive Officer Joseph Swedish claims that the antitrust process with Cigna Corp is moving forward as expected – including on the national level – and that tensions with the smaller insurer about the review are in the past.  Swedish, speaking at the UBS Global Healthcare Conference, said that he expects the U.S. Department of Justice to make a determination on the deal in the “not too distant future.”  Investors have questioned whether the $54 billion deal would be able to get past antitrust regulators.