Home Health & Hospice Week

You’ve got until Sept. 18 to give the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission your two cents on their new guidance for allowing mergers under antitrust rules.

“Unchecked consolidation threatens the free and fair markets upon which our economy is based,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland says in joint release from the departments. “These updated Merger Guidelines respond to modern market realities and will enable the Justice Department to transparently and effectively protect the American people from the damage that anticompetitive mergers cause.”

The DOJ and FTC withdrew guidance they had been using for decades in January 2022, but didn’t release these replacement rules until July 19.

“The Proposed Merger Guidelines are a significant shift from the previous Horizontal Merger Guidelines and Vertical Merger Guidelines, focusing on 13 specific points that the Agencies will now use to determine the illegality of a merger,” law firm Hall Render says in online analysis of the draft.

Access the draft guidelines and comment at www.regulations.gov/docket/FTC-2023-0043.