Andrew Ferguson

Yeah, so we are examining – look, acquihires have been around, especially in the sort of startup founder space for a long time.

And they've gotten bigger basically in the last admin.

And a lot of people were of the view that these things were sort of being constructed in these big deals to try to escape admins.

Hart-Scott-Rodino review, which is pre-merger antitrust review in the United States, because the Biden administration was trying to block all deals, and I think generally they were.

That isn't necessary anymore.

We don't need clever workarounds around antitrust review anymore, because at the FTC under the Trump administration, you get a fair shake.

I'm not saying your deal will go through.

I've sued to block several deals this year and I've won those cases.

But if your deal is not illegal, we get out of the way and sort of let the market take care of things.

So we are beginning to examine that the HSR Act has a provision that says you're not allowed to structure deals in order to escape pre-merger review.

And so we are beginning to examine these acqui-hires to make sure that they aren't an attempt to get around HSR review.

But

The message I want to send sort of to Silicon Valley and to the M&A infrastructure generally is you don't need to structure deals as a clever attempt to get around pre-merger review.

You'll get a fair shake at the FTC.

Deal may not go through, but if your deal is legal, I will get out of your way very quickly.

And if it's not, I'll take you to court and I'll fight to win there.

We're not going to let the process be the punishment anymore.

But, you know...

It is important to us to make sure that people aren't going to use clever deal structures to get around pre-merger review.

Yeah, and we are beginning to examine how these deals work.