Private Equity Pass No More: Antitrust Enforcers Look to Increase Scrutiny on “Roll Up” Acquisitions (JD Supra)

The two top federal antitrust enforcers, in contemporaneous interviews, recently highlighted a new target for antitrust enforcement for their respective agencies: private equity firms and their acquisition strategies. Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General (“AAG”) for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), in an interview with the Financial Times, indicated that he intends the DOJ to conduct “a fuller assessment” of private equity deals, especially in situations where firms are engaged in transactions that are “rolling up” companies in the same, or competitively adjacent, industry segments.¹ Kanter, in the interview, stated that “’[s]ometimes [the motive of a private equity firm is] designed to hollow out or roll up an industry and essentially cash out. That business model is often very much at odds with the law, and very much at odds with the competition [the DOJ] is trying to protect.’”