THR regrets the recent rise of litigation as the dominant tool of merger enforcement in the United States.
The Biden administration has been known for its aggressive approach to merger control and other antitrust enforcement. One feature of this has been the decline of pre-complaint settlement remedies (eg: agreements with the merging parties to divest assets to a competitor) in favor of lawsuits to stop the merger completely. In 2023, no such pre-complaint settlements with traditional remedies occurred. Prior administrations have employed a mix of the two methods.