reminds me of the first episode of the tv show “Billions”
main character bobby axelrod quote "But then again, what’s the point of having “fuck-you money” if you never say “fuck you?”
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It seems like they certainly want to say fuck you to the FTC 
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I wonder at what point the business companies will start including FTC related clauses (like ignore FTC if it goes to their internal courts) because FTC is actively delegitimises itself worldwide.
Some people assume that CMA will sue because FTC did, but I doubt that CMA cares about FTC’s political and don’t think they want to gain the same reputation.
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This is going around about the CMA, seems they aren’t the biggest fans of behavoiral concessions. This is all previous phase 2 decisions. Seems they dont really have much history with behavoiral concessions, they do with divestiture:
Well, seems the CMA will be doing something they don’t like.
I’ve seen this posted numerous times on Era, but nobody was able to answer or give me the breakdown of how many of these were for vertical or horizontal mergers. My understanding is the CMA is more lenient with vertical mergers.
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Those were mostly horizontal mergers. You literally had the head of CMA (or whatever her position was) explaining that out of all big tech acquisitions in the last 5 years they blocked only one.
People use this chart for more concern trolling mainly.
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Lol well it’s effective 
Every concern trolling about Xbox is always effective because we have a lot of Sony fanboys that wish Xbox to fail (and blow out of proportions everything Xbox related) and we have a lot of Xbox folks that are afraid of everything (to the point that they sometimes lose self-respect) 
We literally had Microsoft clearing Linkedin and Nuance in UK and both those were vertical mergers.
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Probably due to the timing and the size. If ABK were only $25B and sold 2 years ago I bet it would have cleared in 10 months.
FTC would sue anyway. Also in the same chart they specifically state 4% of UK deal mortality (global mortality are the deals blocked worldwide - I bet EU has one of the biggest records)
Idas on Era:
Yesterday the lawyer from META hammered so much the FTC’s expert witness and the survey used to define the relevant market in the Within case that the judge is already considering throwing it out
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FTC is now suing in bad faith and all their cases are basically trash that collapses in any court that follows the laws. The Axon vs FTC case shows exactly what FTC is doing. They are not trying to uphold the law at all.
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So I looked up the lawyers that Microsoft is using. They hired the lawyer team that is on the Altria/JUUL case in administrative court at the FTC. It does not look like they did much to move up the timeline. The FTC administrative judge dismissed the case back in February and then in September the FTC appealed back to themselves. How do they take 7 months to appeal, what the heck?
Also, as far as I could tell the case is still going on, but I’m trying to research further.
This case needs to get to the federal court somehow.
Update***
This is interesting and if I’m a betting man is a big reason they go for these lawyers. I would guess they intend to push this to federal court and these lawyers have been working constitutionality challenges similar to the supreme court challenge pending: FTC Antitrust Challenge Of Altria/JUUL Gets Curiouser And Curiouser - Antitrust, EU Competition - United States
“Throughout the challenge, the parties challenged the constitutionality of the FTC and its procedure on separation of powers and due process grounds. The parties’ briefing made much of the FTC’s enviable 25-year winning streak of the Commissioners never ruling against a challenge that they voted out. A different company whose actions are being challenged by the FTC, Axon Enterprise, recently argued to the Supreme Court that it should be allowed to raise similar constitutional issues before going through the same FTC’s procedures as Altria/JLI did.”
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This is what Hoeg highlighted in one of his streams how the FTC is struggling getting through a number of their cases within their own administrative process.
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My goodness, the more I read the stuff coming out of the FTC administrative court the more absolutely insane it is that they have an in house process. It should be gutted and they should have to go to federal court.
As far as I could tell in the Altria/Juul case, the FTC
- made an administrative complaint and set a court date months out
- Lost in front of their judge
- Waited 7 months to announce an appeal
- Had staff basically revolt against this
- Waited 3 months past their duty to respond and dismissed staff complaints and opinions
- Changed the entire basis of their case this month and announced a new court date in December where is expected Altria will buck at all of this
- FTC will likely to face another constitutionality case about their process before the Axon case and this may also go to the supreme court…
What the heck is the FTC doing.
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stall long enough so people abandon their mergers
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It’s not even a merger, it was just a sizeable investment (12 billion)…
Well, that’s their internal courts - nobody in a rush and they have no obligations towards everybody. They never lose to themselves in the last 25 years after all. Due to that properly as a long companies probably abandon the deals as they can’t close them and it takes too much time.
Yes, but the problem is that unlike federal courts they can do that as long as they want, appeal much later and so on. Not in a hurry basically.
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When is Microsoft meeting the CMA this week