DAMITT Q2 2018 Update: Duration of Significant Antitrust Merger Investigations May Have Plateaued Despite Unchanged Levels of Enforcement in the US and the EU
Newly released data from DAMITT, the Dechert Antitrust Merger Investigation Timing Tracker, indicates that the vigorous level of merger enforcement that has characterized recent years is unchanged, but what had been a four-year trend of increasingly longer significant antitrust merger investigations may have plateaued.
The DAMITT Q2 2018 update recorded 13 significant antitrust merger investigations resolved in the United States in the first half of 2018 and 10 in the EU, each roughly on par with the same period last year. In both jurisdictions, however, there was a marked change in the mix of type of resolutions. In the United States the number of complaints rose relative to the same period last year, while in the EU there was a larger percentage of investigations that went to Phase II in 1H 2018 as compared to 1H 2017.