On October 10, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in collaboration with the Department of Justice, released its finalized changes to the premerger notification form and rules implementing the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act. In a new insight, Director of Competition Policy Fred Ashton compares the final rule to the initial proposal, walks through its estimated costs, and considers the broader impact.

Key points:

The FTC’s finalized rules governing the HSR Act represent a dramatically scaled-back set of rules compared to the original proposed rule. Yet while the estimated total cost burden of an additional 68 paperwork burden hours per filing at $139.3 million is noticeably smaller, the effect will be that of a tax that will likely delay deals and threaten to deter merger activity.

Read the analysis