The US Senate is considering a bill to ban mergers of large companies
US Senator Elizabeth Warren and her colleague Mondar Jones have introduced a bill to ban anti-competitive mergers. If it is accepted, companies will not be able to make transactions more expensive than $5 billion.
According to the text of the bill, the ban also affects contracts, as a result of which the buyer company captures 33% or more of the market in financial terms and 25% of the personnel market in the niche.
The new law will allow for procedures to verify and cancel those mergers that harm competition. The Federal Trade Commission and the Ministry of Justice will be able to identify and terminate transactions that were approved several years ago.
Such tactics of regulatory authorities will greatly affect the current market situation.
As a result, Meta and Instagram, Amazon and MGM can be separated. Microsoft‘s deal with Activision Blizzard may also come under attack.
As for future mergers, regulators will be able to ban large transactions without necessarily going to court.
The Antimonopoly commission will carefully consider each new agreement for its impact on the labor market.
There will also be a “black list” of those who have already committed mergers harmful to the market over the past 10 years. They will be prohibited from acquiring other companies in the future.
At the moment, the bill is only being considered by the Senate and is rather an expression of the position of the Democratic Party to which Warren belongs. It will require the approval of most of the senators for the document to go for signing.
US Senate Meeting
At the same time, the bill was supported by more than 70 human rights organizations.
Warren has already spoken out on the antitrust issue in 2019. For example, she suggested that all companies operating large technical platforms should be considered infrastructural. In her opinion, such businesses should be prohibited from simultaneously owning platforms and companies selling their goods on this platform.
