Opinion: STAT+: Don't expect Novo-Catalent merger investigation to fizzle out under the new Trump administration

Changes in administrations may create the specter of significant changes in antitrust enforcement. But I know from my own experience as policy director of the Federal Trade Commission at the close of the Clinton administration that there is remarkable consistency between presidents. Expecting a change in enforcement policy is often a fools errand. 

The most important investigation before the FTC right now is Novo Holdings’ proposed acquisition of Catalent. Some people might be expecting the FTC to abandon that investigation because of the election results, but I think they are dead wrong. The commission operates as a bipartisan agency. While it’s not perfect, its approach to merger challenges is supposed to be based on antitrust analysis rather than changing political administrations.

But even beyond that, the first Trump administration showed that it had an interest in enforcing antitrust laws. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice brought the first vertical merger challenge in federal district court in roughly 40 years when it sued to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. It also brought many vertical merger enforcement actions whereby the DOJ and FTC required divestitures to remedy vertical harms in its challenges, suggesting that if the parties did not agree to the divestitures, the Trump administration would have litigated.  

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