Antitrust is burning: The Tipline for 7 August 2019

Former Federal Trade Commission commissioner James Nicholson spoke before the 91st annual meeting of the American Bar Association 51 years ago today. “Surely these are not sleepy times in antitrust,” he said, perhaps describing an era of enforcement with some parallels. He noted news reports that detailed a “runaway boom in mergers” and referred to the FTC as “more aggressive” than the “more cautious” Department of Justice. One noticeable difference is the level of public engagement Nicholson saw – “antitrust is not a burning public issue,” he said.