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Merger activity declined last week with one new deal announced and three deals completed.
The pace of M&A activity continued to stay low for the third week in a row, after The Wall Street Journal reported on August 15, 2022, that under Chairwoman Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission was questioning mergers that likely would have gone unchallenged in the past years. Ms. Khan said in an interview,
“In all too many areas of our economy, including agriculture, airlines, healthcare, we’ve seen significant consolidation and reduction of competition. Mergers have played a role in that.”
I discussed how Ms. Khan’s decision to block Meta’s acquisition of Within Unlimited is a game changer in an article titled The FTC Throws A Wrench Into The Meta Machine in early August and wrote the following,
Unbridled capitalism with no checks and balances is not good for consumers or society at large. Unfortunately, you could also go to the other extreme where onerous regulations and red tape stifle growth and innovation. If the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or the Department of Justice (DOJ) decide to step in and sue to block a merger of large public companies, most companies give up and the deal falls apart. Every once in a while you end up with a situation like UnitedHealth Group’s acquisition of Change Healthcare (CHNG) where the companies decided to take their slim chances in court.