FTC Is More ‘Focused’ on Blocking Bad Deals After Amazon-iRobot

After Amazon.com Inc.’s decision to abandon a proposed acquisition of iRobot Corp. this week, the Federal Trade Commission is “extremely focused” on blocking bad mergers, a senior official said.

Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, one of three Democrats that control the US antitrust agency, said at a Brussels conference on Wednesday that the FTC was already probing the transaction when Amazon dropped the deal.

“That’s a big change in direction,” said Slaughter. “We are extremely focused on deterrence in our work,” adding that lawsuits send an “important market-wide message about where our concerns are.”

FTC staff had met with Amazon last week to inform them they had recommended filing a complaint to block the deal, Bloomberg previously reported.

Slaughter’s comments come as the FTC faces a looming decision on the $24.6 billion deal between supermarket giants Kroger Co. and Albertsons Cos. The Washington state attorney general sued to block the deal earlier this month and federal enforcers are expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to file their own challenge to the transaction.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Leah Nylen in Washington at lnylen2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Jeremy Hodges

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