Watchdogs Cannot Allow Another T-Mobile/Sprint Merger Under New Consolidation Guidelines, Event Hears

WASHINGTON, May 10, 2022 – A professor of economics said at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event late last month that the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, during its recently announced review of mergers, should ‘plug those holes’ that previously allowed T-Mobile to acquire Sprint.

“I would say that one thing that we have accumulated a great deal of evidence on is that we are missing problematic mergers – that we are not [stopping] mergers that turn out to be harmful,” said Fiona Scott Morton, the Theodore Nierenberg Professor of Economics at Yale University School of Management, at the April 28 event, referring to the FTC’s failure to stop the Sprint/T Mobile merger and accused it of not appropriately protecting consumers.

“We are under enforcing as a general matter and we should therefore use this review of the merger guidelines to plug those holes,” she said, adding, “Are we catching nascent competitors that are going to prove to be important competitors in the future? It turns out we are not doing that,” she said.

She also responded to critics asserting that the FTC simply needs more money to effectively enforce their guidelines.

“Here is where I am going to play fiscal conservative,” she said. “How about we change the rules to make it easier for the government to bring these cases and then we do not need to spend $2 billion more, we could spend half a billion dollars more because there would be a significant deterrent effect and the government would have less work to do.”

Merger guidelines will give industry more certainty

In January, the FTC under Chair Lina Khan and the Justice Department’s antitrust division launched a public inquiry into modernizing merger guidelines established under previous leadership, on which Khan said was an attempt to “accurately reflect modern market realities and equip us to forcefully enforce the law against unlawful deals.” Public comments were due on April 21.

Howard Shelanski, a partner at law firm Davis Polk, said at the ITIF event that FTC guidelines serve several purposes.

“One thing is certainly, just to let parties considering mergers to have an idea of what kind of scrutiny they are in for at the agencies,” he said.

He explained that the guidelines serve to inform stakeholders at which levels of industry concentration presumptions of harm will be triggered and what theories of harm the FTC will pursue.

“I think [guidelines] also let parties know how agencies will consider different kinds of defenses that [will] likely be raised,” Shelanski added. “So, the guidelines certainly serve a public purpose, but they also signal to courts about what lies behind the [FTC’s] thinking when it chooses to investigate and ultimately challenge a merger.”