The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department filed 50 merger enforcement actions in fiscal year 2022 — the highest level of enforcement activity in more than 20 years.
The commission brought 24 merger enforcement challenges in FY 2022, including:
- Eleven in which it issued final consent orders after a public comment period
- Seven in which the transaction was abandoned or restructured due to antitrust concerns
- Six in which the FTC initiated administrative or federal court litigation
These enforcement actions preserved competition in several sectors of the economy, including consumer goods and services, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, high tech and industrial goods, according to the FTC.
The findings were published Dec. 21 in the FTC and Department of Justice's annual Hart-Scott-Rodino Report, which recorded 3,152 transactions in 2022 — the second-highest number of reported transactions over the past 10 years.
Of the 3,152 transactions reported, 47 transactions or 1.6% of all HSR-reportable transactions were subject to a second request issued by the agencies. The number of second requests issued by the agencies in FY 2022 is consistent with the average number of second requests issued across the last decade, according to the report.
In a statement to Congress, FTC Chair Lina Khan — along with Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya — warned that the stakes for the American people when it comes to antitrust issues are very real.
"We have heard from a wide breadth of people about how consolidation directly threatens their ability to live stable and secure lives," according to the statement. "An organization representing more than 200,000 nurses told us that hospital consolidation had reduced options for employees, and that the resulting 'threat of being blacklisted from further hiring in a system that controls many of the hospitals in the area makes workers afraid to file complaints, organize their workplace, or leave before the end of a contract.' A healthcare startup told us that healthcare mergers have made it extremely difficult for patients living in rural areas to access critical services for mental health."
The report comes during a year when the FTC and DOJ increased their scrutiny of healthcare transactions, including ramping up its post-merger investigations and looking into attempts to illegally monopolize healthcare markets.