FTC Checking Microsoft, Yahoo! Acquisitions
The Federal Trade Commission is conducting a review of Microsoft’s $6.1 billion proposed bid for interactive agency aQuantive, according to press reports.
Yahoo’s $680 million offer to acquire the 80% of ad exchange Right Media that it does not already own will also come under FTC review.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the commission is undertaking reviews of the two deals as required by the 1976 Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act. The majority of those reviews are completed within 30 days. In most case, the FTC does not issue a “second request” for information it considers necessary to deciding whether a merger is anticompetitive.
Reports could not confirm whether either Microsoft or Yahoo! had received a second request for data.
The agency has issued a second request to Google in response to its $3.1 billion bid for the DoubleClick ad-serving platform and other holdings.
Earlier this month, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers sent a joint letter to the FTC and the Justice Department urging them to take a “careful, wide-ranging and comprehensive perspective” on the impact of consolidation on competition in online advertising.
“During the past month, there have been several major acquisition announcements in the online-advertising marketplace,” the joint letter said. These mergers, if approved, certainly would change the online-advertising marketplace. As such, those proposed combinations deserve careful scrutiny.”
