ANTITRUST IN THE DECADE AHEAD: SOME PREDICTIONS ABOUT MERGER ENFORCEMENT

The unduly aggressive merger policies of the 1960s were substantially relaxed during the 1970s,2 but the exact location of the line between mergers that did and did not violate Section 7 remained unsettled. In the 1980s, we have had minimalist enforcement. There have been no challenges by the government to vertical and conglomerate mergers, although the Department of Justice's own Guidelines cover these types of transactions. As to horizontal mergers, virtually all cases have involved extremely large mergers in highly concentrated markets. In my view, that is not the policy originally intended by Congress or supported widely in Congress today, and it is not a policy required or even encouraged in Supreme Court decisions.