2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines: Changes in Policy, Transparency, & Predictability

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) issued revised Horizontal Merger Guidelines (“HMGs”) on August 19, 2010. The HMGs resulted from a process that obtained comments about revising the 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines (1992 HMGs), held workshops, issued proposed HMGs, and received comments on the proposed HMGs before finalization. The stated purposes of the HMGs are:

[to] describe the princ