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Matt Stoller Profile picture
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Jan 28 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
"Antitrust is the main concern for merger-arbitrage funds, according to a Bloomberg News survey this month of 12 U.S.-based fund managers, analysts, and brokers."

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
"He added that the flurry of legal challenges was a primary reason that many of the deals announced last year involved $10 billion or less." - Peter Orszag, the C.E.O. of Lazard’s financial advisory business
"Mega takeovers in the US — deals north of $25bn or $50bn — plummeted in 2021, according to data from Refinitiv, as companies particularly in pharma and tech have shied away from taking regulatory risks." - Financial Times ft.com/content/03a2df…
Point here is that @CSWilsonFTC is pro-merger and pro-monopoly, and she's trolling a more aggressive FTC. But Wall Street, which actually bets on mergers, is worried about higher enforcement.
More... ft.com/content/3152d1…

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 27
"On the basis of his antitrust record, he is an unjust man. Breyer is the candidate of big business and monopoly in America.”

I look back at the legacy of Stephen Breyer, perhaps the most important ally of monopoly power over the last forty years.
mattstoller.substack.com/p/stephen-brey…
According to former FTC official Charles Mueller, Breyer straight-up lied during his confirmation hearing, telling Senator Metzenbaum that antitrust plaintiffs sometimes won and sometimes lost in his court. In fact they always lost. mattstoller.substack.com/p/stephen-brey… Image
"When his retirement announcement came, I was watching an event on antitrust at the Mercatus center, a libertarian forum sponsored by firms like Google. The big law partners, upon learning the news, immediately turned from bashing Lina Khan to lamenting Breyer’s retirement."
Read 6 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 20
Senate Judiciary committee passes big tech antitrust bill on nondiscrimination. 16-6.
Big tech probably spent tens of millions opposing this bill alone. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were calling Senators personally. A bipartisan thrashing is not the outcome they wanted.
As this bill moves, remember that it's just as possible for the bill to get stronger on the floor as weaker. Far more importantly than this bill, the Senate Judiciary just opened the floodgates. Now everyone knows there's an overwhelming majority to address big tech power.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 18
Lina Khan is talking about reviewing merger policy for the FTC and asking for public comments. Such public comments will be, in her words, "critical."
Khan saying that the current merger wave "threatens to concentrate markets further." See our report on the merger frenzy. economicliberties.us/our-work/merge…
Khan says that while the merger wave has "delivered benefits for investment banks," it has not delivered benefits for ordinary Americans.

Antitrust mic drop
Read 16 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 18
My initial thinking is that this is sort of an attempt to do to gaming what vertical integration did to Hollywood.
Some initial thoughts. The Microsoft-Activision acquisition is clear evidence of consolidation in gaming. It's not just that Microsoft already owns 30 studios, it's that Activision itself is a roll-up of 25+ gaming studios. A merger of mergers.
There are reasons to think Microsoft will run Activision better than its existing leadership, which is terrible. But the clear goal here is to build out its streaming service Game Pass, and more broadly to achieve market power in the ecosystem of gaming.
Read 8 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 18
This paper is incredibly dishonest. The main program was the Fed's bailout of the stock market, but somehow @davidautor de facto deny that the Federal Reserve bailout even existed. Just utterly shameful.
What a shocker that a bunch of Federal Reserve economists don't evaluate the Federal Reserve's massive bailout of billionaires.
The Paycheck Protection Program was quite successful at saving small businesses, and small businesses make a lot of products and services we need, and anchor communities. For some reason economists don't see any value in production or community.
Read 5 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 17
1. I know everything is supposed to be totally awful in politics, but allow me to interrupt constant doom and gloom with... good news. On the monopoly front, corporate power is, ever so slightly, ebbing. Here are eight examples from the last week. mattstoller.substack.com/p/hope-on-the-…
2. Government antitrust cases are progressing. The Federal Trade Commission won an important procedural victory against Facebook this week. marketplace.org/shows/marketpl…
3. Meanwhile, state attorneys general, whose antitrust case was dismissed last year, appealed the dismissal. Normally they would have given up, but increasing heat on Facebook gave confidence to state level enforcers.
Read 17 tweets

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