The Antitrust Week In Review

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

Anthem Sues Cigna to Block Termination of Merger.  Anthem on Wednesday won a temporary restraining order that blocks smaller rival Cigna from officially terminating their proposed $54 billion merger, a transaction already rejected by U.S. antitrust regulators.  The deal would have created the largest U.S. health insurer.  Rivals Aetna and Humana had sought their own merger, representing an unprecedented consolidation among U.S. health insurers.  In separate rulings, federal judges struck down both deals as anticompetitive, at the request of the Justice Department.  Aetna and Humana said on Tuesday they were ending their deal, but Anthem filed an appeal of its ruling.

Top Antitrust Senators Call for Sessions to Scrutinize AT&T-Time Warner Merger.  The top senators on the  Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel are urging the U.S. Department of Justice to scrutinize the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger for the possibility that it leads to anticompetitive practices.  The subcommittee’s chair, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wrote a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions pointing to aspects of the deal that they find troubling.

U.S. Antitrust Obstacles Seen for T-Mobile, Sprint Deal.  Japan’s SoftBank Corp Group may have renewed interest in combining its Sprint Corp with Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile US Inc., but a deal between the No. 3 and No. 4 U.S. wireless carriers may not make it past U.S. regulators, antitrust experts and industry watchers said.  SoftBank is prepared to give up control of Sprint to T-Mobile, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.  The companies are expected to begin negotiations in April after the Federal Communications Commission’s auction of airwaves concludes.

Kraft Heinz Offers to Buy Unilever in $143 Billion Deal.  The world’s grocery carts could soon be filled with more and more products from one global colossus.  Food, beverage and consumer-goods companies have been seeking merger partners to obtain greater scale and efficiencies as consumers, particularly younger shoppers, eschew the boxed and jarred foods of their parents’ generation.  Now, one such recently merged giant, Kraft Heinz, has set its sights on the biggest target to date: Unilever, the home of Dove soap and Axe body spray, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Hellmann’s mayonnaise.  But a merger would be certain to draw antitrust reviews by regulators from many countries.