Home Health & Hospice Week

Regulatory changes are afoot for mergers and acquisitions.

If you want the feds’ approval on your proposed merger, you’d better make sure it checks these 13 boxes newly put forth by regulators.

The 13 principles include:

1. Mergers should not significantly increase concentration in highly concentrated markets.

2. Mergers should not eliminate substantial competition between firms.

3. Mergers should not increase the risk of coordination.

4. Mergers should not eliminate a potential entrant in a concentrated market.

5. Mergers should not substantially lessen competition by creating a firm that controls products or services that its rivals may use to compete.

6. Vertical mergers should not create market structures that foreclose competition.

7. Mergers should not entrench or extend a dominant position.

8. Mergers should not further a trend toward concentration.

9. When a merger is part of a series of multiple acquisitions, the agencies may examine the whole series.

10. When a merger involves a multi-sided platform, the agencies examine competition between platforms, on a platform or to displace a platform.

11. When a merger involves competing buyers, the agencies examine whether it may substantially lessen competition for workers or other sellers.

12. When an acquisition involves partial ownership or minority interests, the agencies examine its impact on competition.

13. Mergers should not otherwise substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.