The Paul, Weiss Antitrust Practice advises clients on a full range of global antitrust matters, including antitrust regulatory clearance, government investigations, private litigation, and counseling and compliance. The firm represents clients before antitrust and competition authorities in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions around the world.
Antitrust Issues in Bidding for Corporate Control
October 11, 2006 Full PDF
As has been widely reported this week, the United States Department of Justice has begun an inquiry into allegedly anticompetitive behavior among certain private-equity funds. It is not clear how widespread the investigation will be, and it may well be limited to a few transactions. Nevertheless, this investigation sounds an important alarm about the risks that can arise under federal and state antitrust laws from coordination between competing bidders - or potentially competing bidders - for a target company. Antitrust issues could arise from a wide array of conduct by private equity firms, ranging from communications with competing bidders about pricing, to joint bids (either initially or by previously competing bidders), to agreements by a bidder to withdraw from an auction as part of a formal or informal deal with a competing bidder.