The claim that there are less mergers happening is from Khan not Silcon Valley.
“Sometimes, you know, the companies decide that they’re going to abandon the merger,” Khan said. Stahl asked if abandoning a merger amid the FTC’s scrutiny was a win, to which Khan said, “That’s right.”
https://legal-mag.com/ftcs-lina-khan-defends-merger-and-acqu...
Yes, because some mergers are bad. Like really really bad. For you and me, consumers.
If adobe merged with figma that would be catastrophic for that domain. Prices would skyrocket, quality would invariably fall off, and innovation would stagnate due to lack of competition.
Part of having a free market is maintaining it. You can't have a free market if it's constantly consolidating into a monopoly or pseudo-monopoly. This is bad for the products, for the market, and for the consumer.
The keyword in that last sentence is market. Plenty of people will argue what the FTC is doing is stifling economic growth - but it's the opposite. Anti-competitive behavior stifles economic growth in the long run, so preventing it allows smaller companies to grow and innovate. Keeping slow moving giants on life support and de-facto welfare is not good for the economy.
I don't disagree with some of the aims of Lina Khan, mostly just the strategy. Scaring away potential mergers is much, much less valuable than establishing case law or getting legislation passed. It is kinda parallel to overreliance on executive orders over legislative wins.
> Scaring away potential mergers is much, much less valuable than establishing case law or getting legislation passed
There're a few problems with this:
1. Our lawmakers are incredibly inefficient, and many dedicated their lives to ensuring new laws don't get passed. Doesn't matter what the law is, they're career "blockers"
2. Our courts are not unpartisan, and many are conservative-leaning, and they'll simply continually strike down laws until they make it up and up and then the extremely conservative supreme court blocks it. This has been Texas' strategy.
You can't establish case law if you don't take cases. Companies not wanting to go through with mergers because they are afraid of the FTC investigating them sounds like a side effect and not the intent.
It's a mix of both. Some mergers fall through under regulation fear. Others fall through because aquisitions are expensive and it'd take years to make up for the cost (like the activision/blizzard one that was announced when money was cheap and went through when money became expensive).
“Sometimes, you know, the companies decide that they’re going to abandon the merger,” Khan said. Stahl asked if abandoning a merger amid the FTC’s scrutiny was a win, to which Khan said, “That’s right.” https://legal-mag.com/ftcs-lina-khan-defends-merger-and-acqu...