The year 2014 was an active year in antitrust and competition law, both for governmental enforcement and private litigation. Governmental regulators continued to pursue a pattern of aggressive antitrust enforcement, ranging from merger challenges to criminal investigations. With respect to private litigation, key antitrust concepts continued to play out in federal district and appellate courts regarding the international reach of domestic antitrust law, liability for manipulating global financial benchmarks and the legality of reverse-payment settlement agreements.
Merger Enforcement
For the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 2014 marked a continuation of the regulators’ aggressive approach to merger enforcement. Both the Justice Department and FTC achieved particular success with challenges to unwind consummated transactions that were not reportable under Hart-Scott Rodino.1
