Hit with a ‘tidal wave’ of merger filings in 2021, FTC rethinking how it reviews consolidation
The Federal Trade Commission has received a flood of merger filings in 2021, forcing the influential agency to rethink how it reviews proposed deals in radiology and other business sectors.
Tallies are nothing short of “astounding,” Holly Vedova, acting director of the Bureau of Competition wrote recently. In May of last year, for instance, the FTC logged 73 merger transactions, which skyrocketed almost 350% the same month in 2021, up to 326.
Officials are short on bodies to deal with the deluge. So, the FTC said it plans to begin retroactively reviewing some mergers and will decouple transactions if it determines they cannot stand.
“This year, the FTC has been hit by a tidal wave of merger filings that is straining the agency’s capacity to rigorously investigate deals ahead of the statutory deadlines,” Vedova wrote in a blog post shared Aug. 3. “We believe it is important to be upfront about these capacity constraints.”
The specialty has seen its own share of large mergers in recent months, ranging from Rad Partners obtaining Mednax’s imaging business line to provider Akumin expanding into oncology and other radiology services. Tech giant Microsoft also stepped into this space with a proposal to acquire radiology vendor Nuance, which notched antitrust approval in April. And the Department of Justice continues to scrutinize UnitedHealth’s plan to buy Change Healthcare.
Amid this flurry of activity, the FTC said in January that it’s probing the impact of physician group mergers. The current threshold for review under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act is $92 million, and the statute grants the agency 30 days to pursue its initial investigation. However, the law allows the FTC and DOJ to determine a deal is illegal, even after two companies have merged, Vedova emphasized.
The agency has already started sending form letters alerting businesses that it may not be able to review deals within the requisite timeline.
“Companies that choose to proceed with transactions that have not been fully investigated are doing so at their own risk,” Vedova cautioned.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.