FTC, DOJ Report Highest Merger Enforcement Total Since 2001

The FTC and DOJ filed 50 merger enforcement actions in fiscal 2022, marking the highest total since the 55 actions in 2001, the agencies said Thursday in the annual Hart-Scott-Rodino Report. Combining parties abandoned seven deals in 2022, nearly 2 percentage points higher than the 5.4% abandonment average over the past 10 years, the agencies said. The FTC filed six litigation complaints in 2022, nearly doubling the 3.2 average during the previous decade. “These enforcement actions preserved competition in numerous sectors of the economy, including consumer goods and services, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, high tech and industrial goods, and energy,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a joint statement with Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. The telecommunications sector represented 0.7% of the 3,029 deals reported in 2022. ISPs, web search portals and data processing services accounted for 3.6% of the agreements.