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

Southwest Airlines Settles Suit but Denies Colluding to Keep Ticket Prices High.  A federal judge has approved a $15 million settlement between Southwest Airlines and members of a class-action lawsuit who allege that the company, along with three other airlines, conspired to limit the number of seats available to customers and keep ticket prices high.  In a statement, Southwest said the settlement “does not constitute any admission of wrongdoing” and denied having entered into any unlawful agreements with its competitors.  The move appeared to represent a break of sorts between Southwest and the other three defendants named in the lawsuit:  American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.  Those companies have also denied doing anything illegal, and they continue to fight the allegations.

EU Asks:  Does Control of ‘Big Data’ Kill Competition?  European Union antitrust regulators are taking a hard look at an increasingly important corporate currency: data.  The EU’s competition chief is focusing on how companies stockpile and use so-called big data, the enormous computer files of customer records, industry statistics and other information.  The attention diverges starkly from a hands-off approach in the U.S., where regulators emphasize how big data can generate innovation.

Lawsuit:  Duke, UNC Agreed to Not Hire Each Other’s Doctors.  The basketball rivalry between Duke University and the University of North Carolina battle is legendary, but a federal lawsuit says the two elite institutions have agreed not to compete in another prestigious area:  the market for highly skilled medical workers.  The antitrust complaint by a former Duke radiologist accuses the schools just 10 miles (16 kilometers) apart of secretly conspiring to avoid poaching each other’s professors.  If her lawyers succeed in persuading a judge to make it a class action, thousands of faculty, physicians, nurses and other professionals could be affected.

Argentina approves Telecom ‘quadruple play’ services.  Argentina’s communications regulator Enacom said on Friday it had signed off on new rules allowing companies to offer so-called quadruple play services that include landlines, mobile phones, pay television and the internet.  Approval had been expected in early 2018 after phone company Telecom Argentina SA and Cablevision SA, an internet, cable TV and data transmission company, reached a merger agreement in July.  Enacom also said on Friday it had authorized mobile phone providers Claro and Telefonica licenses to offer pay television and radio services in select cities in Argentina.

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

Ramen price-fixing class action headed for U.S. trial.  A federal judge in San Francisco has refused to dismiss antitrust class action litigation accusing two big South Korean ramen producers of conspiring to fix prices in the United States, clearing the way for a trial.  U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Thursday rejected efforts by market leader Nongshim Co. and Ottogi Corp. to dismiss claims brought by food retailers and distributors, and by consumers in 23 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.

Google Extends Commitments Stemming From U.S. Antitrust Case.  Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it will extend commitments made five years ago to U.S. antitrust officials related to how developers use its advertising platform and the scraping of third-party content in search results.  The internet search giant said in a blog post that it will continue the practices that were about to expire, saying they provide “additional flexibility” to developers and web sites.

Can Disney’s Bid for Fox Overcome Antitrust Concerns?  The Walt Disney Co. is acquiring most of the assets of 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion in stock, or $66.1 billion after the assumption of debt, creating a content behemoth that will have the power to reshape the sports and entertainment landscapes.  Their combined heft will give them even more leverage over cable companies and internet service providers while strengthening their online video streaming services, according to experts at Wharton and elsewhere.

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

AT&T vs. Disney: How the Trump Administration May View 2 Mega-Mergers.  AT&T’s proposed $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner would normally have had a good chance of passing muster with antitrust officials in Washington.  Disney’s bid to purchase 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion, on the other hand, would have had a smaller chance.  But in a break from the norm, the Justice Department has sued to block the AT&T-Time Warner deal, and has so far remained silent on the Disney-Fox deal.

EU antitrust official sees competition threat if mergers lead to high margins.  EU regulators are keeping tabs on high profit margins enjoyed by companies that are merging, concerned this may threaten competition, a senior EU antitrust official warned on Tuesday.  The comments by Chief Competition Economist Tommaso Valletti underline current unease among antitrust enforcers on both sides of the Atlantic about whether they have gone too far in allowing a recent wave of mergers and acquisitions.  Some have resulted in significant price hikes, to the detriment of consumers.

U.S. employers say CVS-Aetna deal would affect health-benefits decisions: survey.  CVS Corp.’s proposed purchase of Aetna Inc. will affect decision-making by a majority of large and mid-size U.S. corporations on employee health benefits, a survey by benefits consultant Aon Plc found.  CVS, the second-largest U.S. pharmacy benefit manager, on Dec. 3 said it agreed to buy No. 3 health insurer Aetna for $69 billion.  Reuters reported earlier this month that the deal would change the way top U.S. employers contract health benefits, based on early feedback from benefits consultants.

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

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Lawsuit by Minor Leaguers. The Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit filed by minor league baseball players accusing Major League Baseball of colluding to suppress wages, leaving intact a District Court ruling that dismissed the case.  In a one-sentence announcement Monday, the Supreme Court said it would not accept Miranda v. Selig, a suit filed by four minor leaguers in December 2014 alleging MLB’s hiring and employment policies violated antitrust laws by restraining competition among teams and illegally depressing minor league salaries.  U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. dismissed the case the following September, citing the antitrust exemption granted professional baseball by the Supreme Court in 1922 and the failure of Congress to alter it for minor leaguers in the Curt Flood Act of 1998.

CVS likely wants FTC antitrust review, not Justice Department, of Aetna deal. It is uncertain who in the U.S. government will carry out an antitrust review of CVS Health Corp’s deal to buy health insurer Aetna Inc, but the drugstore company is likely hoping the potentially more lenient Federal Trade Commission gets the nod, antitrust experts say.  The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission share the job of reviewing mergers to make sure they don’t hurt consumers, but sometimes it comes down to a coin toss as to who reviews a deal that involves both agencies’ areas of expertise.  The Justice Department might be best-placed since it recently reviewed, and stopped, two insurance industry tie-ups, including Aetna’s plan to buy rival Humana Inc.

Trump and Warren Find Common Ground on Antitrust. President Trump and Senator Elizabeth Warren make odd antitrust bedfellows. Ms. Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, says megadeals like Aetna’s $77 billion sale to CVS could kill competition.  She also backs the Justice Department’s fight against an AT&T-Time Warner merger and has concerns about past merger remedies.  That puts her in the same camp as the president.  She laid out her views on deal making in a speech on Wednesday. AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, she said, would mean higher prices, fewer choices and worse service for consumers.  That echoes Mr. Trump’s antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, and the Justice Department’s November lawsuit to block the deal, which asserted that the merger would leave millions of television viewers paying more and would slow innovations like video streaming.

AT&T/Time Warner antitrust trial set for March. The trial to determine if the U.S. Department of Justice can stop AT&T Inc’s $85 billion purchase of media company Time Warner Inc will begin on March 19 with no decision expected before the companies’ April 22 deadline to complete the deal, a federal judge said on Thursday.  Time Warner and AT&T, which is the No. 2 U.S. wireless company and also owns DirecTV, announced their deal in October 2016, but it was not until last month that the Justice Department sued AT&T to block the deal, arguing it could raise prices for rivals and pay-TV subscribers and hamper the development of online video.  Judge Richard Leon said during a hearing on Thursday he would likely not have a decision by the deadline in the companies’ merger agreement, but would rule in late April or May.

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

CVS Expands Into Insurance With $69 Billion Aetna Bid.  CVS Health wants to do much more than fill your prescription or jab your arm with an annual flu shot.  The drugstore chain is buying the nation’s third-largest health insurer in order to push much deeper into customer care.  The evolution won’t happen overnight, but in time, shoppers may find more clinics in CVS stores and more health care they can receive through the network of nearly 10,000 locations that the company has built.  But antitrust regulators still need to approve the deal, and that is not guarantee.

AT&T and Time Warner say proposed merger is ‘pro-consumer’.  AT&T Inc and Time Warner Inc. argued on Tuesday that their proposed $85.4 billion merger was “pro-competitive” and “pro-consumer”, as they sought to refute U.S. Justice Department allegations that the deal breaks antitrust law.  In a joint court filing, the companies focused on rebutting government efforts to show that AT&T, which owns pay-TV provider DirecTV, would raise rates for rival pay-TV companies to use Time Warner’s movies and TV shows.  They also argued that the government was wrong to worry that the deal would hamper the development of online video.

Bayer says antitrust reviews going into ‘unimaginable depths’.  The antitrust review of Bayer’s planned takeover of Monsanto is going into “unimaginable depths,” Bayer’s Chief Executive Werner Baumann said on Wednesday, but added he remained confident that the deal would be closed early next year.  “To illustrate the point, we have by now delivered more than 4 million pages of documents to the EU commission,” Baumann told a conference.  The reason for the intense scrutiny was a new focus by authorities on competition in research and development, and an effort to predict the effect on future product markets.

FCA Says Four Fund Firm May Have Breached Competition Law.  Britain’s markets regulator said four asset management companies might have broken competition law during share sales in the first case that uses its antitrust enforcement powers.  The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) alleges that Artemis Investment Management, Hargreave Hale, Newton Investment Management and River & Mercantile Asset Management shared information about how much they planned to pay for stock deals shortly before prices were officially set.  Newton said it was cooperating with the FCA, that there had been no loss to any clients or investors as a result of the activity and that it did not anticipate any loss in the future.