The new Trump administration during its second week has provided an early sign that US companies will not get a free pass for large mergers and acquisitions.
It came Thursday when Donald Trump’s antitrust cops at the Ministry of Justice filed a legal action aimed at preventing Hewlett Packard (HPE) from acquiring a juniper networks rival (JNPR).
“I think that for those who thought that the new administration would be gentle in the antitrust or sweet on mergers, think again,” Yahoo Finance Alden Abbott, principal researcher at the Center Mercatus and former lawyer of the Commission of the Commission of the Commission Federal trade.
The MJ allegedly alleged that the $ 14 billion link in the second and third business wireless networking providers in the country would considerably reduce competition on this market.
“Acquisition, if consumed, would lead to two companies – the market leader Cisco (CSCO) and HP – controlling much more than 70% of the American market and eliminates fierce -to -head competition,” said the Doj in his suit.
In the third quarter of 2024, Cisco almost controlled 42% of the market For local business wireless networks or WLAN, which includes hardware and software for devices to connect wirelessly in areas like offices and school campuses.
Hewlett Packard and Juniper published a joint declaration This called the legal analysis of the DoJ “fundamentally imperfect”. The combination of companies, she said, would be in pro-competitive activity, would improve innovation and give customers more choices on the networking market.
Mark McCareinsProfessor of the clinic at the Kellogg School of Management of the Northwestern University and former antitrust litigant, expects that the antitrust executors of Trump will stick to more traditional and well tested legal theories than those used by the executors of the ‘Biden administration.
“I think this administration is more concerned with victory,” he said, and “they don’t want to take cases in which they lose, because they have precious resources, and this sends a bad message S ‘ It is a waste of resources.
Investors applauded Trump elections in part because they hoped that it would mark the end of an aggressive antitrust application era which included federal confrontations with some of the giants of American companies.
But Trump has already abandoned several clues that his approach to mergers and acquisition approvals could also be aggressive, especially with regard to technology giants.
“Big Tech has been taking place in the wild for years,” Trump said in a press release on his social platform Truth announcing his choice of Gail Slater to direct the DOJ antitrust division.
