AT&T/Time Warner Merger Clearance Paves Way for Future Transactions
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Key takeaways:
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The D.C. federal court’s complete rejection of the Department of Justice’s challenge to the AT&T-Time Warner merger not only will permit that transaction to proceed (unless the DOJ obtains a stay from the Court of Appeals, a result the D.C. court said would be “manifestly unjust” because the drop-dead date is approaching), but also is likely to encourage other transactions in the media industry and beyond.
- The court’s 172-page analysis of the trial record, finding much of the DOJ’s proffered evidence and its theories of competitive harm to be speculative, unconvincing or inconsistent with the bulk of the evidence presented, illustrates the difficulty of establishing harm to competition from a vertical merger, where the government cannot rely on the elimination of competition between the merging parties.