Two Agencies, Two 'Nascent Competitor' Merger Challenges

December 18, 2019

Joel Mitnick comments on the Federal Trade Commission's move to block DNA-sequencing company Illumina's proposed $1.2 billion takeover of PacBio.

An excerpt from "Two Agencies, Two 'Nascent Competitor' Merger Challenges," Law360, December 18, 2019:

Joel Mitnick, a partner at Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP and former FTC trial attorney, called the Illumina-PacBio matter "a very traditional potential competition case" where a dominant firm is buying a much smaller competitor.

 "The fact that it has a new name doesn't change it," said Mitnick, adding that the case has nothing to do with the kind of technology platform mergers that agency critics have said don't get the scrutiny they deserve. The naming, Mitnick said, appears to be an attempt to make it look like antitrust enforcers have a new theory that could be applied to big tech.

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