Cooling M&A Activity Portends Focus Shift for Antitrust Agencies

Declining merger and acquisition activity will lighten antitrust regulators’ merger review workload, setting them up to focus more on cracking down on conduct that violates federal antitrust law.

The number of M&A deals in the US has sunk year-over-year to 4,573 in the third quarter of 2022 from 5,240 in the year-earlier period, according to Bloomberg data.

Any merger at or above $101 million in value requires either the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department’s antitrust division’s approval after a period of “Hart-Scott-Rodino” (HSR) review on whether the deal would have anti-competitive effects.

A slowdown in M&A activity will ...