The public interest!: The Tipline for 5 September 2019

The merger of CVS and Aetna is in the public interest, Judge Richard Leon has concluded almost 11 months after the Department of Justice’s antitrust division conditionally approved the deal. In a 22-page opinion featuring three exclamation points, Judge Leon stood behind both his decision to initiate the intensive review and to open its scope beyond the DOJ’s stated concerns. Assistant attorney general Makan Delrahim clearly had some fun in punctuating the end of another lengthy battle with the judge who ruled against the DOJ on the vertical AT&T/Time Warner merger: “I am pleased with the court’s decision finally to enter the judgment as ‘well within the reaches of the public interest’!”