Statement of Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard A. Powers of the Antitrust Division and FTC Chair Lina Khan on Competition Executive Order’s Call to Consider Revisions to Merger Guidelines

The following joint statement can be attributed to Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard A. Powers of the Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan: 

“We must ensure that the merger guidelines reflect current economic realities and empirical learning and that they guide enforcers to review mergers with the skepticism the law demands. The current guidelines deserve a hard look to determine whether they are overly permissive. We plan soon to jointly launch a review of our merger guidelines with the goal of updating them to reflect a rigorous analytical approach consistent with applicable law.”