ANALYSIS: Fight the FTC—Or the Fed? M&A Is Complicated

A lot of life is luck—and a lot of luck is timing. The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department decided to be tougher on mergers during the Biden administration and, as luck would have it, the economy decided to be tougher on mergers at about the same time.

That makes it particularly hard to sort out any real-world impacts of the antitrust enforcers’ new, more stringent merger-review policies from the other forces affecting mergers. So who is to blame for last year’s disappointing M&A market?

For better or worse, it’s hard for either those in favor of antitrust policy ...