Scott Sher Discusses Potential Slowdown Effects of New FTC Merger-Review Process on Deals With Corporate Counsel

Antitrust partner Scott Sher was quoted extensively in a Corporate Counsel article about the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s recently revised Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) premerger notification rules, which will require companies in a proposed merger to provide a significant amount of additional data to the FTC and Department of Justice. In the article, “New Merger-Review Process Could Doom Some Deals, Add Headaches, Subjectivity to Others,” published on October 23, Scott says that the new rules require companies to provide a substantial amount of additional information regarding the structure of the parties that are filing and their investors, including those with a minority interest in either the buyer or the seller—something expected to impact especially private equity firms and investment firms with large portfolios of managed investments. While this is not fatal for most deals, “at the margins it certainly impacts the ability to do deals,” Scott says. “It’s absolutely going to slow down deals.”

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