Vertical mergers, yesterday and today

Last week, I spoke about a topic that has attracted a lot of popular interest in antitrust enforcement lately—vertical merger enforcement. We view vertical mergers as an important part of the FTC’s enforcement agenda. However, it is true that, relative to horizontal mergers, vertical mergers are a smaller part of the workload of the FTC and the DOJ’s Antitrust Division.

I wanted to address that difference by discussing three issues: (1) what are the key differences—from an enforcement perspective—between horizontal and vertical mergers; (2) what facts might cause us to pursue enforcement in a vertical merger; and (3) what types of remedies do we look for in vertical mergers?