The Antitrust Week In Review

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

Obama’s Work to Limit Mergers May Stop With Trump Administration.  A nascent effort by the Obama administration to limit corporate consolidation, begun after officials concluded that a lack of competition was hurting the American economy, appears to be coming to an abrupt end as the Trump administration takes charge.  President-elect Donald J. Trump railed against media company mergers on the campaign trail, promising to block the proposed combination of AT&T and Time Warner, but conservatives and liberals alike say they see no evidence Mr. Trump will be worried about the continuing rise of megacompanies in other parts of the economy once he takes office.

U.S. Appeals Court Revives Antitrust Lawsuit Against Apple.  iPhone app purchasers may sue Apple Inc. over allegations that the company monopolized the market for iPhone apps by not allowing users to purchase them outside the App Store, leading to higher prices, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday.  The  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling revives a long-simmering legal challenge originally filed in 2012 taking aim at Apple’s practice of only allowing iPhones to run apps purchased from its own App Store.  A group of iPhone users sued saying the Cupertino, California, company’s practice was anticompetitive.

Source: Obama DOJ Won’t Push Antitrust Case Against Airlines.  The Justice Department, which started investigating alleged collusion between the nation’s major airlines in mid-2015, will not bring an antitrust case against the carriers before the Obama administration leaves office at the end of next week, according to a person familiar with the situation.  The civil investigation has not been closed, cautioned the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Justice Department has not announced anything publicly.

AT&T Chief Executive, Trump Meet Amid Planned Time Warner Merger.  AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson on Thursday met in New York with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, an opponent of the company’s acquisition of Time Warner Inc.  A spokeswoman for Trump confirmed the meeting after Stephenson was seen entering Trump Tower.  Stephenson, who was accompanied by Robert Quinn, AT&T’s senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, would not answer questions from reporters.  AT&T said later on Thursday that the company’s $85.4 billion deal for Time Warner was not discussed.