FTC to examine every acquisition by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft in 2010-2019 over antitrust issues – By Ingrid Lunden (Techcrunch) / Feb 11 2020
Companies like Apple, Amazon and Google do not always disclose every acquisition they make, especially when the companies in question are little fish in the big tech pond. But in aggregate, all that M&A could pose bigger questions about how they are using their financial power and market influence in anticompetitive ways.
That idea is the subject of the latest announcement from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which today issued Special Orders to five big tech firms — Alphabet (including Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft — “requiring them to provide information about prior acquisitions not reported to the antitrust agencies under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act.”
The five companies will need to come clean and report on every deal they have made — whether or not the media has spilled the beans on the acquisition or not — including the terms (that is, price and other financial details), scope, structure and purpose of each transaction made between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019.
“The orders will help the FTC deepen its understanding of large technology firms’ acquisition activity, including how these firms report their transactions to the federal antitrust agencies, and whether large tech companies are making potentially anticompetitive acquisitions of nascent or potential competitors that fall below HSR filing thresholds and therefore do not need to be reported to the antitrust agencies,” the FTC said in a notice on the investigation.
Continue to article: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/11/ftc-to-examine-every-acquisition-by-alphabet-amazon-apple-facebook-and-microsoft-in-2010-2019-over-antitrust-issues/
