Admin, Author at Antitrust Education Project

ESG, Big Labor and Starbucks

Most controversies in the ESG arena concern the E, for environment. At center stage is ExxonMobil’s lawsuit against shareholder activists Arjuna Capital and Follow This for their campaign to force the company “to change the nature of its ordinary business or to go out of business entirely.”

The FTC’s Case against the Kroger/Albertsons Deal Puts Politics Before Economics

Riddle me this: Why have increases in food prices been in line with inflation from the 1980s until the Biden administration took over?

Internal emails show FTC’s Lina Khan is trying to win by losing

Critics of progressive antitrust have long wondered if Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan’s extraordinary losing streak in high-profile antitrust cases is the result of deliberate strategy rather than mere incompetence. Last summer, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) pointedly asked Lina Khan in a hearing: “Are you losing on purpose?”

Khan and Mekki Still Wearing Blinders When It Comes to ESG

The progressive antitrust regulators of the Biden Administration often warn their fellow C-Suite progressives that environmental, social and governance promises don’t compute in antitrust. Early in her tenure, Lina Khan took to the pages of the enemy, excuse me, I mean The Wall Street Journal, to warn companies that the Federal Trade Commission cannot use ESG to buy a little extra consideration for a merger or an acquisition.

The NCAA Invites Another Antitrust Slap-Down

The legendary coach John Heisman began each season by holding up a football and asking: “What is this? It is a prolate spheroid, an elongated sphere in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing. Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”

BlackRock Doubles Down on ESG While Others Exit

Quick: What retreats and advances at the same time? Asset managers and ESG.

Antitrust, ESG, and the “Little Green Shoots” of Capitalism

The Anglo-American business law firm Norton Rose Fulbright released an international survey of 200 senior executives that portrays the 2024 deal-making environment in hopeful terms, portraying it as having “green shoots of optimism amid uncertainty.”

EU Sweeps Aside the Amazon-iRobot Deal

There’s something rotten about the ease with which European antitrust regulators are nixing U.S. mergers and leveling fines against successful American companies. Case in point – the scuttling of the Amazon purchase of iRobot on Monday.

It’s Time to Release the Antitrust Hounds on ESG

The stock market’s recent rise and gentle subsidence has been something of a January-effect cliché. While the market flirts with historic highs, and happy talk about a “soft landing” is shared over cocktails, the U.S. economy continues to struggle against the weight of high national and consumer debt, reduced but persistent inflation, geopolitical turbulence … and lower investor returns from ESG funds.

The Dunkin’ Donuts Suit and Economic Illiteracy

The most striking – and risible – feature of recent federal antitrust lawsuits is their paucity of economic logic. This is on display from the self-contradictory arguments of Lina Khan’s FTC antitrust case against Amazon, to DOJ’s illogical suit against the JetBlue-Spirit merger. Both would reduce consumer choices and raise prices in the name of protecting the consumer.