In September 2009, the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ, and together, the antitrust agencies) announced plans to hold workshops to explore updating the Horizontal Merger Guidelines (Guidelines) with respect to selected issues. The last significant revision of the Guidelines was in 1992 and the concern of some is that, in the intervening 17 years, much has changed in practice at the agencies, in economic theory, and to some extent, in the positions taken by courts.
When the Guidelines were first promulgated, they had as an objective to provide greater transparency into the standards then being applied by DOJ in the identification of acquisitions that were likely to be challenged.1
