Justice Department and FTC Extend Public Comment on RFI Targeting Serial Acquisitions, Roll-Up Strategies

The joint request for information (RFI) seeks to learn more about how corporate actors, including private equity owned businesses, become larger — and potentially dominant — through acquisitions of several smaller firms in the same or related business sectors or industries. The new deadline to submit comments is Sept. 20.

Businesses do not have to report every deal to the federal antitrust agencies, but some non-reportable deals still allow firms to amass significant control over key products, services or labor markets without government scrutiny. These types of transactions can harm competition to the detriment of consumers, workers and innovation across an entire industry or business sector.

The agencies’ RFI seeks to understand more about these deals and strategies, and invites a wide range of stakeholders including consumers, workers, businesses and others to submit their comments.