Virus-Related Regulatory Review Changes Not Seen Having Big Impact on M&A

Antitrust Attorney David Kully spoke with Communications Daily about how COVID-19 impacts on the FTC and DOJ might affect antitrust reviews. Mr. Kully explained that regulatory reviews of mergers and acquisitions aren’t expected to face major COVID-19-related slowdowns despite FTC suspension of early terminations or DOJ Antitrust Division announcing it will seek extra time to complete its review work and leaving the door open to extending that timeline further. Few deals necessitate second information requests by DOJ and that extra time won’t materially change how transactions play out.

“Parties in noncontroversial M&As probably have an expectation the FTC and DOJ will do a review quickly and grant an early termination of that 30-day wait, meaning the deal can close within a couple of weeks,” Mr. Kully said. “Without early terminations, those noncontroversial deals will have to wait out the 30 days. Parties expecting a deal to sail through will need to account for that couple of extra weeks of wait time in their planning.”

READ: Virus-Related Regulatory Review Changes Not Seen Having Big Impact on M&A (Page 7)