Antitrust expert. Prof @UMemphisLaw School. Former @FTC Bureau of Competition Deputy Director, trial attorney @USDOJ Antitrust Division, prof @UMiami Law.
Miami, FL
Joined September 2019
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Yikes. Calls to mind the AT&T/Time Warner merger a court (and DOJ) cleared back in the 2010s: both anticompetitive and also value-destructive for the combined firm itself.
variety.com/2026/film/news/s…
The best new #antitrust podcast, no contest. Rebecca is a wonderful host -- smart, funny, thoughtful, curious, engaging.
MONOPOLIZER EP2 JUST DROPPED! Listen to me and @johnmarknewman talk about "Lawless Antitrust" and the hipsters who want to fix it. open.spotify.com/episode/7yF…
Follow me and @BalanceCrafting if you want to get breaking #antitrust news 18 months ahead of time 😄
Good to see a private #antitrust class action challenging West's acquisition of Casetext. Casetext started threatening the longstanding Westlaw/Lexis duopoly. West promptly acquired Casetext and shut it down. A killer acquisition if ever there was one.
One observation on this Paramount/Warner Bros. saga is it looks like California is settling out of fear that CA would lose jobs to other states... But there's a very good chance the merger is just going to kill jobs period. Hard to see why other states would go along with that.
This exclusive "news" story smells like a Paramount psyop. I've had some experience dealing with sneaky PR campaigns by big companies trying to push mega-mergers through antitrust review.
Here's why this one stinks: short 🧵, (1/x)
tmz.com/2026/09/16/paramount…
3. Paramount immediately did... nothing. So the story is "Paramount told the government that it was going to tell the government that it's going to leave the state." But then Paramount didn't actually do that--with zero explanation for the supposed change of plan.
It would be kind of hilarious if this ostensibly pro-business antitrust lawsuit against the NYC grocery store program ends up eliminating the "recoupment" requirement for predatory-pricing claims, something that's long been on the antimonopoly wish list.
This week, Memphis–the birthplace of rock’n’roll–will host a brilliant group of rockstar scholars for the 2nd annual Antitrust, Business & Consumer Law Colloquium. It's cosponsored by UGA @TerryCollege & cohosted by my good friend and coconspirator Greg Day. Check out the lineup:
Entergy sued local newspapers, trying to keep its deal w/ Google secret. The suit failed; the news is out: Entergy reportedly plans to hike West Memphis ratepayers' utility bills by ~$6 each month for the next 20 years, all to fund Google's new datacenter.
actionnews5.com/2026/09/02/d…
Great read from @danielahanley on the historic role FTC studies and reports have played in generating legislation: danielhanley.substack.com/p/…
Check out the table at the end collecting tons of examples (more than can fit in this screenshot)!
Not surprising but still disappointing: Judge Brinkema declines to order structural remedies (the "most important" ones) against Google, despite having found that @G engaged in illegal monopolization. If Microsoft is an indicator, behavioral remedies carry high risk of failure.
To answer my good friend Herb's question below, it was neither! The '23 Merger Guidelines simply made clear what courts and enforcers have continued to do all along: use the practical-indicia framework when it's most useful, and the HMT when it's most useful.
This morning’s post in “The Monopoly Problem” considers the “Brown Shoe factors” for antitrust market definition, which the 2023 Merger Guidelines revitalized. Was that an advance or a costly mistake? herbhovenkamp.substack.com/p…
John Mark Newman retweeted
Last week, @AGIowa Brenna Bird filed a bizarre lawsuit, saying that because the federal government and "China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Kuwait" and other foreign countries okayed the corrupt Paramount-Warner Brothers merger, other states should not be able to sue.
If she wins her lawsuit, the next time an ag conglomerate gobbles up yet another seed company or meatpacker or processor in Iowa and the feds okay it, Iowans who were hurt by this would be... SOL.
Add to this the fact that this would neuter the nation's first antitrust law... which was passed... in Iowa... and the whole thing sounds like it was backwards day? Or opposite day?
I am still processing this, but I recommend you read Max M. Miller and @johnmarknewman's terrific essay on this in the @DMRegister.
🔥Hot off the press🔥 I have a new piece w/ fmr IA AAG (now @econliberties) Max Miller, on a wild lawsuit Iowa just filed directly w/ SCOTUS *against* the states challenging Paramount's mega-merger with Warner Bros. Link to our op-ed @DMRegister here:
desmoinesregister.com/story/…
