The Antitrust Attorney Blog

Best Practices for Merger Reviews before the Federal Agencies and the California Attorney General’s Office

February 5, 2024 | Bona Law PC

Introduction

Over the past several decades State Attorneys General have become increasingly involved in merger reviews in tandem with the Federal Trade Commission and/or the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (the Regulatory Agencies). This increase in state merger reviews has been in parallel with states raising their merger and non-merger profile and general antitrust enforcement efforts statewide and nationally. This trend has occurred, in part, as Attorneys General expanded their staffs and have become increasingly experienced in antitrust enforcement efforts and merger analysis. While many states, including California, do not have statutes mandating proposed merger registration, Attorneys General have statutory authority to investigate conduct to ensure no laws have been violated³. This means that an Attorney General can decide to review a proposed merger whenever they think it may violate a state’s antitrust laws. Therefore, it makes sense to notify an Attorney General when a proposed merger may have a competitive impact in a specific state and is likely to trigger an in-depth analysis at the federal level. Some examples might be a merger between two competitors who have substantial overlapping retailing assets, service routes, or service areas in one state. Such a notification to a state allows parties to avoid duplicative and possibly successive investigations. Best practices have emerged around how to conduct a merger investigation with a Regulatory Agency and tandem with the California Attorney General’s office.

Best Practices When Cooperating with Staff

Contacting the federal agency likely to review a transaction before submitting an HSR filing is increasingly becoming part of merger review practice. Since there is no statutory requirement to seek regulatory authority to merge at the state level in California a best practice is to invite the Attorney General to participate in the review process to avoid subsequent investigations that could have been run in parallel with other agencies and possibly avoid efforts by the staff ex-post to unwind a transaction⁴. Contacting the California Attorney General (Cal-AG) before an HSR is filed is generally well-received by staff and is typically considered a smart strategy because it allows the staff assigned to the transaction the ability to begin reviewing the transaction before the 30-day statutory clock has started. This extra time allows staff more time to conduct a review before any enforcement decisions need to be made and in some cases provides the time necessary to avoid one altogether. In addition, a pre-filing notification to both staffs permits the two agencies to interact freely since there is no HSR confidence to maintain.

We are in an era where many meetings are conducted over video. Generally, saving time and client resources is a good thing; however, visiting a State Attorney General’s staff in their office at the beginning of a merger can pay significant dividends. An in-person visit can establish the foundation for a positive working relationship, allow for clear communications⁵ and most importantly, communicate to the staff and Attorney General that you are aware of the importance of their involvement and welcome their participation. The in-person visit makes a significant first-step in ensuring that things start off on the right foot.

Once the HSR is submitted, the Cal-AG is able to file her Form 712 and to continue the interagency dialogue with the benefit of the documents and filings the parties have made. The Cal-AG’s staff can also begin to reach out to third parties and seek waivers that permit the FTC/DOJ to share what is produced with the states. This is more efficient for the producing parties as well, as they can make what amounts to a single production to satisfy both reviewing agencies⁶. Securing these waivers early in the process also allows the staffs to communicate freely, to share economic analyses based on produced information, and for the CAL-AG staff to join party meetings with the FTC/DOJ⁷. This level of cooperation benefits all involved as it prevents parties from making the same presentation twice and it allows both regulatory agencies to hear the same information simultaneously.

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Did You Receive an FTC or DOJ Subpoena? Be Sure To Preserve Everything Ephemeral

February 2, 2024 | Bona Law PC

Authors: Steven Cernak & Molly Donovan

The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are reminding companies that, in responding to grand jury subpoenas and second requests, there is an obligation to preserve data and communications created using “new methods of collaboration and information sharing tools, even including tools that allow for messages to disappear via ephemeral messaging capabilities.” The government has specifically called out Slack, Microsoft Teams and Signal as being some of the applications of concern “designed to hide evidence.”

The government says that while there has always been an obligation to produce information from ephemeral messaging applications in investigations and litigations, the purpose of the reminder is to ensure that counsel and clients do not “feign ignorance” when choosing to use ephemeral messaging to do business. Thus, the FTC and DOJ will include new, explicit language in subpoenas and other requests specifically stating that data from ephemeral messaging applications must be preserved. A failure to meet that obligation could result in obstruction of justice charges.

More generally, once a company has been served with a subpoena, a document hold should be prepared and circulated right away. A document hold is a written notification to relevant employees not to delete, destroy or alter any electronic or paper materials potentially relevant to the subpoena. The notice must unpack what that language means in plain English and should be conservative in describing what “potentially relevant” means—(remember that just because something is being preserved does not necessarily mean it will have to be produced.)

The document hold should apply to all types of messaging (text, IM, DMs, ephemeral) to ensure that all existing and going-forward materials will not be deleted. The relevant persons with IT expertise should certify internally that preservation is occurring effectively, that all auto-delete functions have been turned off, and that back-up tapes are not being purged automatically.

It’s also a good idea to instruct employees not to talk to each other about the subpoena or the underlying subject matter. When employees talk to each other, it can create the appearance of collusion—i.e., employees are coordinating with each other about what to say or not say to the lawyers or to the government. This can raise obstruction suspicions that may only grow if the discussions occur over ephemeral messaging applications that employees think will not leave a paper trail behind.

If employees believe that they or others have violated, or behaved inconsistently with, company policies or relevant laws, employees should discuss that only with in-house or outside counsel—not with each other.

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Antitrust Agency Publishes Revised HSR Notification Thresholds and Filing Fees For 2024

January 23, 2024 | Bona Law PC

Authors: Steven Cernak and Luis Blanquez

On January 22, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its usual annual announcement to increase the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act thresholds. The 2024 thresholds will take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, which is expected soon, so the thresholds likely will be effective in late February.

HSR requires the parties to submit certain information and documents and then wait for approval before closing a transaction. The FTC and DOJ then have 30 days to determine if they will allow the merger to proceed or seek much more detail through a “second request” for information. The parties may also ask for “Early Termination” to shorten the 30-day waiting period, although for nearly two-years this option has been––and continues to be––suspended.

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Best Antitrust Practices for Exchanging Competitive Information via Third Parties

January 4, 2024 | Bona Law PC

Authors: Steve Cernak & Molly Donovan

There is no guaranteed safety zone for exchanging competitively sensitive information amongst competitors. Practices once deemed relatively safe—like subscribing to a third-party data services provider to manage the exchange—now carry increased risks. This is mostly because machine learning and AI have made it possible to predict a specific competitor’s future strategies even if a third party has aggregated and anonymized the underlying data and even if the underlying data is old.

While antitrust compliance is best assessed on a case-by-case basis, there are general guideposts that third parties and their subscribers should understand before gathering, providing, and/or exchanging price, production, procurement, employment or other competitively sensitive data that competitors would not (or should not) share directly with each other.

Antitrust concerns are at their peak if the exchanged information allows competitors to increase price or restrict output in explicit or even tacit collusion with each other in a joint effort to raise profits industry wide. To steer clear of even the appearance of such conduct, these pointers matter:

Avoid exchanging data that is comprehensive, detailed and current. Any one of these is a concern, but the combination is very concerning.

Comprehensive means the information covers every aspect of business planning and strategy: how to procure, how to price, how to set production levels, and how to compensate workers and executives. Have you been asked to provide entire internal business plans? That should raise flags.

Detailed means the data reveals information broken down by specific production facilities or specific products, as examples. The higher level, the better. More detailed, lower-level information entails more risk.

Current means the information exposes what your business is doing in real time. The government once said that data should be at least 3 months old before it is exchanged, but machine learning and complex algorithms have since increased the value of historical data—making it possible that subscribers might be able to use even months-old data to discern future-facing strategies.

Don’t fill in the donut hole. Even when the information exchanged is not comprehensive, make sure that it is not the missing piece that, when combined with information that “everyone knows,” allows subscribers to act collusively. Even after the information exchange, those subscribers should still not be certain about how their competitors will act and react.

Asymmetry can be a bad fact. Suspicions are raised if the third-party reports are available only to companies who compete at the same level of the supply chain—and not to their suppliers, employees, and/or customers. The “give to get” idea (i.e., you must be able to provide the relevant data to receive the relevant data) can appear collusive.

The antitrust risks from all exchanges are not equal. Exchanging price, production, and cost information is risky. Exchanging tips on organization of a parts warehouse is less risky (though not riskless). Your antitrust reaction should be calibrated to the different levels of risk.

Voluntary surveys and periodic polling are preferred over direct downloads of internal ledgers and reports. You obviously would not share the latter directly with a competitor, so you should exercise equal caution before sharing it with a third party.

Don’t couple sensitivity with deanonymization. Flags should go up if subscribers are able to deanonymize sensitive information, i.e., identify which competitor supplied what information.

Even aggregated data poses risks. Ask whether subscribers can use algorithms or other methods to disaggregate data to predict competitors’ pricing or output strategies.

Complete or near-complete industry participation could appear collusive. If the data being shared represents all or most of the relevant industry, talk to counsel about risk mitigation. The risks increase if the third party discloses the identities of the participants (or they are otherwise known, obvious or can be inferred) and/or the industry is concentrated.

Third-party consultants should not advise subscribers how to use the information to raise total industry profits. Nor should consultants in their reports to subscribers identify opportunities to raise prices or restrict output or tell one subscriber how other subscribers are using the information.

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FTC Sues IQVIA To Block Healthcare Programmatic Advertising Acquisition

January 3, 2024 | Bona Law PC

Authors: Molly Donovan & Steven Cernak

Update: The FTC has won a preliminary injunction to stop IQVIA from acquiring Propel Media. The judge (Judge Ramos in the Southern District of New York) ruled the injunction is in the public’s interest and the FTC has shown a reasonable probability of a substantial impairment in competition should the deal proceed. A written opinion is not available as of this post (January 3, 2024).

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The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block IQVIA’s proposed acquisition of Propel Media—a deal the FTC says would combine two of the top three providers of programmatic advertising that target U.S. healthcare providers on a one-to-one basis. The FTC says IQVIA and Propel both operate demand-side platforms or “DSPs” (called Lasso and DeepIntent, respectively) in an already-concentrated “healthcare provider programmatic advertising market” (a “subset of the total healthcare digital advertising industry”). And the FTC argues the deal would result in further concentration in that market and would significantly decrease advertising competition, which would contribute to higher prescription drug costs for U.S. consumers.

The FTC has filed an administrative complaint and has asked the Southern District of New York to block the acquisition until the administrative trial is completed—projected for December 2023. The FTC requested that the injunction issue in the next few days on or before July 21.

According to the FTC, programmatic advertising matches buyers and sellers of advertising space in virtual auctions that occur in seconds or less. Programmatic advertising automates the more traditional negotiations between advertiser and publisher of print or digital ads. DSPs like Lasso and DeepIntent provide programmatic advertising to healthcare advertisers specifically (i.e., pharmaceutical companies and their advertising agencies).

According to the FTC, IQVIA and Propel are the leading DSPs providing programmatic advertising that targets healthcare providers on a one-to-one basis. This means IQVIA and Propel have the scope and quality of healthcare data to identify individual doctors—and their digital devices—who are relevant to a particular ad campaign. DSPs target healthcare providers because they make the “prescribing decisions” and shape consumers’ perceptions of drugs and drug brands.

Although the FTC admits that there are many “generalist” programmatic advertisers, the FTC urges that healthcare DSPs operate in a distinct relevant market specific to healthcare advertising with clients who have unique advertising demands.

The FTC calls the proposed acquisition presumptively unlawful under the Horizontal Merger Guidelines and caselaw. The FTC’s major concerns are twofold: the combination would eliminate “head-to-head” competition between 2 of only 3 competitors in the relevant market and would enhance IQVIA’s ability to reduce or eliminate potential competition by refusing to sell its healthcare data to would-be competitors or by selling it at anticompetitive prices. The FTC charges that IQVIA is the world leader in terms of the scale and quality of its healthcare data. And while IQVIA currently sells that data to DSPs and others, the FTC says IQVIA would be positioned to increase price and/or reduce access to data critical to one-to-one healthcare DSPs should the deal go through.

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New York Is Not Okay with Non-Competes

January 1, 2024 | Bona Law PC

Author: Molly Donovan

Update: In December 2023, New York Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed the legislature’s proposed prohibition against employee non-competes. The Governor indicated that her “top priority was to protect middle-class and low-wage earners, while allowing New York’s businesses to retain highly compensated talent.” Carve-outs to the bill for highly-compensated employees and executives were discussed, but no agreement as to an income cut-off could be reached. Senator Sean Ryan has said that he expects the legislation to be reintroduced in 2024.

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Five Key Takeaways from Fifth Circuit’s Illumina Merger Review Opinion

December 26, 2023 | Bona Law PC

Author: Steven Cernak

On December 15, 2023, the Fifth Circuit remanded to the FTC its order requiring Illumina to divest its re-acquired subsidiary, Grail. Despite the remand, the opinion is a big win for the FTC. Below, we offer five takeaways for future merging parties and their counsel.

[Disclosure: Bona Law filed an amicus brief for 34 Members of Congress arguing that the FTC’s action violated the “major questions” doctrine and misinterpreted Clayton Act Section 7 in several ways.]

Here is a quick summary of the twists and turns of this case from our earlier writings. Illumina is a dominant provider of a certain type of DNA sequencing. Grail is one of several companies developing a multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test. An MCED promises to be able to detect biomarkers associated with up to fifty types of cancer by extracting the DNA from a simple blood sample. To work, the MCED needs DNA sequencing supply. According to the complaint, the type of DNA sequencing that works best — and with which Grail and all other MCED developers have been working — is the type supplied by Illumina.

The parties announced Illumina’s proposed acquisition of Grail in September 2020 and said that it would speed global adoption of Grail’s MCED and enhance patient access to the tool. In late March 2021, the FTC challenged this transaction by filing an administrative complaint before its own administrative law judge (ALJ). Shortly thereafter, the European Commission announced that it too would investigate the transaction, even though the transaction did not meet its usual thresholds.

During these investigations, the parties closed the transaction. The European Commission decided to block the transaction and the parties appealed. Just before the European decision, the FTC ALJ dismissed the complaint in an unexpected decision ruling for the first time against the FTC in a merger case. In a nutshell, the ALJ concluded that the FTC failed to prove that Illumina’s post-acquisition ability and incentive to advantage Grail to the disadvantage of Grail’s alleged rivals would likely result in a substantial lessening of competition in the relevant market for the research, development, and commercialization of MCED tests. FTC Complaint Counsel appealed the ALJ decision. The four Commissioners unanimously agreed to overturn it. Now, the Fifth Circuit has largely upheld that decision of the Commission, though with a remand for reconsideration of one aspect of the decision, as described below.

Takeaway 1: This Development is Largely an FTC Win

Some of the initial tweets and headlines, perhaps after reading only the opinion’s opening paragraph vacating the FTC’s order and remanding for further consideration, seemed to characterize the Fifth Circuit opinion as another loss for the FTC. But make no mistake, this development is a big win for the FTC for several reasons. First, the FTC challenged this transaction to block, then later, unwind, the acquisition of Grail. About a day after the opinion was filed, Illumina announced it would divest Grail. Mission accomplished.

Second, the court found “substantial evidence” for the Commission’s conclusions, despite arguments by the parties (and amici) to the contrary. As detailed below, the court did not question the Commission’s use of older cases and theories to review mergers.

Third, even the court’s rationale for the remand was not that strong a rebuke of the FTC. During the investigation, Illumina made an Open Offer to other customers of its sequencing, promising to treat them as well as Grail. The ALJ found this a useful additional fact in concluding that Illumina did not have the incentive to harm Grail competitors. The FTC majority opinion disagreed with the ALJ and only considered the Open Offer in the remedy phase of the merger review. Commissioner Wilson also disagreed with the ALJ but considered the Open Offer in Illumina’s rebuttal portion of the liability phase of the review. The parties argued that the Open Offer should be addressed by the FTC Complaint Counsel in its prima facie case for liability. The Fifth Circuit agreed with Commissioner Wilson. It seems certain that the other three Commissioners would have reached the same ultimate conclusion on remand when considering the Open Offer earlier in the process.

Takeaway 2: The Court Quickly Punted Constitutional Concerns

As with several other recent challenges to the FTC and other administrative agencies, the parties raised serious, difficult constitutional questions about the structure and processes of the FTC and its review of mergers. The court wrestled with none of them. Instead, the court took only two pages to explain that the four questions were answered by precedent, either from the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court, and saw no reason to explore whether any court should change. While this opinion is not the final word on these and similar issues, the FTC at least avoided a number of thorny issues for now.

Takeaway 3: Vertical Might be the New Horizontal

We hear sometimes that a proposed transaction should sail through the Hart-Scott-Rodino merger review process because “the parties don’t compete.” While that focus on current horizontal competition might have been a sufficient screen for antitrust issues a few years ago, it no longer is. Whether the Trump Administration’s challenge of the AT&T/TimeWarner transaction or the Biden Administration’s challenge of this transaction, Microsoft/Activision, or others, vertical (and potential competition) mergers have been ripe for challenge for a few years. Illumina’s abandonment of this vertical deal after this ruling will only encourage further challenges by federal and state antitrust enforcement agencies.

Takeaway 4: Courts Sometimes Agree with New/Renewed Antitrust Theories

As the Biden Administration DOJ and FTC have issued new merger guidelines or unilaterally taken other actions, one popular response from parts of the antitrust commentariat has been “but just wait until the courts consider them.” It is true that a long-lasting change in antitrust interpretation (like, say, the Chicago School) can only start with law review articles and enforcer speeches but eventually will require supportive court opinions; however, the “wait for the courts” sentiment seems built on two faulty premises.

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Does the NBA have an antitrust problem? A rival basketball league may think so.

November 13, 2023 | Bona Law PC

Authors: Luke Hasskamp & Molly Donovan

NBA action is FAN-TASTIC! Unless, of course, the action is one brought by the Department of Justice in a different kind of court. But that may be exactly where the NBA finds itself: the DOJ is reportedly investigating the professional basketball association for alleged antitrust violations. The NBA’s alleged anticompetitive conduct targeted Big3, a competitive basketball league founded by Ice Cube and entertainment executive Jeff Kwatinetz (with Clyde Drexler serving as commissioner!). That conduct included allegedly pressuring team owners, current NBA players, and advertisers and partner television networks not to do business with Big3.

Big3 is an aptly named 12-team, 3-on-3 league mostly comprised of retired NBA players. Teams play an eight-week season, followed by a two-week, four-team playoff, all during the NBA’s off-season. In 2023, the Big3’s regular season was held once a week in Chicago, Dallas, Brooklyn, Memphis, Miami, Boston, Charlotte, and Detroit, and the finals were held in London, England.

We’ve previously written about antitrust laws in the sports arena, including the infamous antitrust exemption in professional baseball. But baseball is an anomaly in that regard, as all other professional sports in the United States are subject to federal antitrust laws. (Professional football, baseball, basketball, and hockey are statutorily exempted from antitrust laws for negotiating television broadcast rights. See 15 U.S.C. § 1291.) Thus, antitrust liability is fair game for the NBA.

And, as this story broke, another recent antitrust case jumped to mind: that involving the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, when the PGA Tour faced antitrust scrutiny for its decision to suspend players who played for a would-be competitor league. The NBA dispute has many parallels to the PGA Tour case, though with some notable differences too, even though most details are not public.

To consider the legal nuts and bolts a bit, let’s look at what a Section 1 and Section 2 claim against the NBA might look like.

Section 1 of the Sherman Act – Unlawful Agreements

Federal antitrust laws (Section 1 of the Sherman Act) make it unlawful for two or more actors to enter agreements (conspiracies) to restrain trade or competition in the market. Classic examples include price fixing and group boycotts.

Here, the leading legal theory may be the group boycott. Under that theory, the NBA would have entered into one or more agreements with other entities to thwart Big3’s emergence and growth in the market.

One of the improper agreements reported here is between the NBA and the owners of each of its 30 teams, with the NBA allegedly instructing owners to not invest in the fledgling competitor. (An agreement between a sports league and its individual teams can implicate Section 1 of the Sherman Act, as was the theory in the recently-settled litigation against MLB involving the contraction of minor league teams.) The reports also suggest that the NBA may have persuaded sponsors and other business partners to agree to avoid doing business with Big3.

Section 2 of the Sherman Act – Monopolization

Federal antitrust laws also make it illegal for a monopolist to preserve its dominant market position through anticompetitive conduct. And this section of the Sherman Act does not require collusion with another party—a single actor can incur liability.

Here, the NBA sure looks like a monopoly (or monopsony). It’s the dominant actor in the professional basketball market in the United States, with revenues exceeding $10 billion per year. (While we generally assume that the relevant geographic market is the United States, even if we were to consider the entire world, the NBA may still be a monopolist.) In professional basketball, there is no rival to the NBA. If you are an elite basketball player in the United States, the NBA is pretty much the only place to play (even if you include the Big3).

But the NBA’s status as a monopoly is not unlawful on its own. It’s fine for a business to emerge as a dominant market player through lawful means, such as through “a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident.” United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U.S. 563, 57071 (1966).

Instead, to implicate Section 2 of the Sherman Act, the NBA must have engaged in some “exclusionary” or “anticompetitive” conduct to protect its monopoly and harm competition—that is something other than superior product, business acumen, or historic accident. Examples of exclusionary conduct include tying, exclusive dealing, predatory pricing, defrauding regulators or consumers, or engaging in coercive conduct, such as threatening customers with retaliation if they choose to do business with the would-be competitor in order to stifle the competitor’s growth in the market.

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$1.8 Billion Antitrust Verdict Against Realtor Groups Provides Lessons for Brokerages, Realtor Associations, and Multiple Listing Services Nationwide

November 7, 2023 | Bona Law PC

Authors: Molly Donovan & Aaron Gott

A Missouri jury awarded a class of home sellers $1.8 billion dollars in finding that the National Association of Realtors (“NAR”) and some of the nation’s largest real estate brokerages “conspired to require home sellers to pay the broker representing the buyer of their homes in violation of federal antitrust law.”

At the center of the case was NAR’s rule requiring sellers to pay a non-negotiable commission awarded to the buyer’s broker at a transaction’s closing (“Mandatory Payment Rule”). The brokerages then compelled their agents to belong to the NAR and adhere to the NAR’s rules. The resulting lack of competition for buy-side commissions caused inflated prices that were forced upon home sellers. Every brokerage in the industry understood that every other brokerage was behaving in this same way.

In addition to inflated buy-side rates, the scheme was reinforced by other anticompetitive practices, including “steering”—where buyer brokers “steer” their clients toward homes attached to a non-negotiable buy-side commission—as opposed to homes for-sale-by owner where an automatic buy-side commission may not be offered.

Another resulting problem is that small brokerages looking to attract buyers have a tough time competing. Most importantly, there’s no opportunity to compete on price because the local NAR groups have locked prices in with the following of the major brokerages. Because of that rule—and other NAR rules—innovations with respect to process or pricing have been very difficult to achieve.

So, why has the scheme worked if it’s so bad for consumers and innovators? Because the NAR has near-exclusive control over the MLS or multiple-listing service.

The MLS is an essential database for listing homes because most homes sold in the United States are found there. If a broker does not belong to NAR and/or does not follow the NAR’s rules, it cannot access the MLS and, therefore, cannot effectively compete for selling or buying clients.

This is of antitrust concern in its own right. And certainly, the Mandatory Payment Rule is not the only rule in the industry that has—or could—draw antitrust scrutiny. Rules against buying/selling homes that are “coming soon,” for example, are also restraints of trade that could be a problem. So are rules that fix any of the terms or conditions of selling or buying a home.

Many predict the entire industry will change as a result of the Missouri verdict, the ongoing competition-law litigations and investigations, and the reality that today, home buyers can do their own legwork to find homes without needing a broker’s access or market knowledge. A buyer broker’s role can sometimes be relegated to accessing lock boxes, providing fill-and-sign access to standard forms, and collecting the check.

So what can a brokerage do now to anticipate the changes and guard against future antitrust concerns? Here is some high-level guidance that brokerages ought to consider:

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Antitrust for Kids: Watch Out for Predatory Halloween…Pricing!!

October 19, 2023 | Bona Law PC

Author: Molly Donovan

At Argo Elementary, a group of kids gathers daily at lunch to buy and sell candy. The trading activity is a longtime tradition at Argo and it’s taken very seriously—more like a competitive sport than a pastime.

Candy trading doesn’t end once a 5^th grader graduates from Argo. It continues across town at Chicago Middle School—but instead of lunch, candy trading happens there at the close of each school day. (The middle school had banned lunchtime trading due to several disputes that grew out of hand.)

Now here’s where it gets complicated, and nobody knows why it works this way, but the average lunchtime price at Argo determines the starting price for trades later in the day at Chicago.

For example: the average selling price for a candy bar on Monday, lunch at Argo is $2.50. Monday after-school prices at Chicago also will start at $2.50.

There are rules about what kind of candy can be traded—so that one trade can be easily compared to another (candied apples-to-candied apples) for purposes of determining who’s “winning.”

And sometimes kids—particularly the older ones at Chicago—place bets on what will happen on a particular trading day in the future, e.g., I bet prices will reach $3 or I bet no more than 50 candy bars will get sold this Friday.

That’s it by way of background. Here’s our story.

Arthur D. Midland (“ADM”) is 9. He is the link between Argo and Chicago. Each day, ADM leaves Argo Elementary when school lets out, walks to Chicago Middle, announces the “start-of-trade” Chicago price based on the lunchtime Argo price, and Chicago trading begins. (ADM’s mother allows this because ADM’s older brother (Midas) also trades at Chicago—so the two boys can watch each other.)

At the start of the school year, ADM contrived a very clever scheme. He bet Midas that, on Halloween, Chicago prices would be very low—as low as $1. Midas said, “No way! September prices are already at $2.50. If anything, prices will increase as kids go candy crazy in October. I’ll take that bet.”

So, for every candy bar sold at Chicago on Halloween for $1 or less, Midas would owe ADM $1. And for every candy bar sold at Chicago for more than $1, ADM would owe Midas $1.

With that bet front of mind, ADM became the primary candy seller at Argo, and as Halloween neared, he flooded Argo with candy and sold it intentionally at very low prices—50 cents for a Snickers! (ADM had the requisite inventory because he was an avid trick-or-treater and had saved all his Halloween candy from years past.)

Due to ADM’s scheme, Argo prices got so low that some kids packed up their candy and went home—refusing to trade there at all.

Well, Halloween finally came and, as you can imagine, ADM made a killing on the bet—100 candy bars were sold at Chicago on Halloween at less than $1, forcing Midas to pay ADM his entire savings. This more than compensated ADM for whatever losses he incurred for under-selling at Argo.

Once Midas realized ADM’s trick, he was furious. Didn’t ADM cheat? Midas assumed—as did all candy traders—that bets derived from candy sales would be based on real—not artificial—market forces.

Did ADM get away with it?

So far, no.

My Muse: For now, plaintiff Midwest Renewable Energy has survived a motion to dismiss its Section 2 monopolization claim against Archer Daniels Midland.

The claim is based on allegations of predatory pricing—basically that the defendant’s prices were below an appropriate measure of its costs and that the low prices drove competitors from the market allowing the defendant to recoup its losses. (For more on predatory pricing, read here.)

In the ADM case, Midwest alleges that ADM manipulated ethanol-trading prices at the Argo Terminal in Illinois to create “substantial gains” on short positions ADM held on ethanol futures and options contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Because the Argo prices determined the value of the derivatives contracts, by flooding Argo with ethanol that ADM sold at too-low prices, ADM allegedly was able to win big on the derivatives exchange—recouping whatever losses it incurred on the underlying asset.

On its motion to dismiss, ADM argued that Midwest had not sufficiently alleged that ethanol producers had exited the market due to ADM’s low prices or that ADM subsequently recouped its losses in the ethanol market. (ADM classed these arguments as going to antitrust injury.)

The Court agreed that Midwest was required to allege both that rivals exited the market and that recoupment was ongoing or imminent, but the court ruled Midwest’s allegations sufficient to do so.

Specifically, Midwest had alleged that 12 ethanol producers had either stopped or decreased ethanol production—which is enough at the motion to dismiss phase. The court said whether that alleged “handful” of plant closures had a discernible effect on consumers is a fact-intensive analysis not susceptible to resolution on the pleadings.

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