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.

With AT&T and Time Warner, Battle Lines Form for an Epic Antitrust Case.  If the government goes to court to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, as seems increasingly likely, it may well be the antitrust case of the decade, even without the claims of presidential meddling that have already engulfed the deal in partisan controversy.  A lawsuit by the Justice Department, along with its earlier, widely reported demands that AT&T sell either DirecTV or Turner Broadcasting to gain approval for the deal, would mark a radical departure from decades of antitrust enforcement policy, both in defining what is an unlawful anticompetitive merger and in fashioning a remedy to cure the problems.

Qualcomm-NXP ruling may be in 2018: EU competition commissioner.  A ruling on Qualcomm Inc.’s proposed $38 billion acquisition of NXP Semiconductors NV may come in 2018, European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said on Wednesday.  People familiar with the matter told Reuters in October that Qualcomm has offered to buy NXP without some of its patents in a bid to win EU antitrust regulatory approval.

Missouri Opens Antitrust Investigation Into Google.  Missouri’s attorney general has opened an investigation into whether Google’s business practices violate its consumer protection and antitrust laws amid growing concern over the influence of powerful technology companies.  Josh Hawley, Missouri’s attorney general, said on Monday that his office had issued a subpoena to Google to seek information into the collection and use of users’ private information, the use of other content providers’ information on its sites and potential bias in search engine results.

Japanese regulators raid Airbnb over suspected antitrust practices.  Japanese fair trade regulators raided last month the offices of Airbnb Inc over suspected violations of antitrust laws, the home rental site said on Friday, denying any wrongdoing.  The Japan Fair Trade Commission carried out an on-site inspection of Airbnb and the company is cooperating with the regulators’ investigation, Airbnb Japan said.

By David Scupp

The North American Soccer League (“NASL”) lost an important preliminary match in court last week when the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York denied the league’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would have ordered the United States Soccer Federation (“USSF”) to designate the NASL as a “Division II” professional soccer league.

NASL has appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which may rule on the league’s right to preliminary relief by early December.

For years USSF—a non-profit, membership organization—has served as the de facto governing body for soccer in the United States, claiming that it derives its authority from the international governing body FIFA.

USSF adopts, amends, and applies its Professional League Standards (“PLS”), a set of requirements for professional soccer leagues seeking Division I, II, or III designation in the United States.  The PLS include requirements related to the number of teams in a league, the geographic dispersion of teams, and certain financial obligations.  Division I status is the highest and most desirable status, and has been conferred only on Major League Soccer (“MLS”). click here for more »

By Margaux Poueymirou

Big Data may be revolutionizing companies’ processing of information, but legal disputes over such data management still have to navigate through the shoals of settled antirust principles.

At least that’s the message of last week’s decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit vacating a preliminary injunction that required two companies, CDK Global, LLC (“CDK”) and Reynolds and Reynolds Co. (“Reynolds”), who collectively dominate the market for automobile dealership-management systems, to allow a third-party data-scraper, Authenticom, to access customers’ information.  The court held that the injunction ran afoul of antitrust law’s general disfavor of imposing a duty to deal as a remedy.

This case arose when CDK changed from an open to a closed dealer-management system and entered into a series of agreements with its closed-system competitor Reynolds to facilitate this transition.  Dealer-management systems enable automotive dealerships to track efficiently vital business matters such as accounting, payroll, inventory, sales, parts, service, finance, and insurance.  Open systems enable third parties to access dealer-originated data embedded in the system, while closed systems forbid such data scraping. click here for more »