The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission released their 48th Annual Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Report . This report summarizes the agencies’ merger enforcement efforts and provides fiscal year 2025 data on the Premerger Notification Program, which alerts the agencies to transactions that may substantially lessen competition in violation of federal law.
Enacted by Congress in 1976, the HSR Act gives the DOJ and the FTC the opportunity to investigate and challenge mergers that are likely to harm consumers before injury occurs. The report explains that in fiscal year 2025, companies notified the agencies of 2,006 transactions under the HSR Act, of which approximately 31.8% were valued at more than $1 billion.
The DOJ and the FTC took 18 merger enforcement actions to maintain competition in critically important markets, including healthcare, technology, energy, defense, consumer goods and services, labor and manufacturing.
The DOJ brought ten of these actions: two in which the DOJ initiated litigation, two were resolved by the DOJ filing settlement papers simultaneously with the complaints in U.S. district courts, two that the parties abandoned before litigation commenced as a result of antitrust concerns raised during the DOJ’s investigation, and four that were restructured after the DOJ raised concerns about the threat they posed to competition.