Editor's Note: Symposium on the 2010 Merger Guidelines

Abstract

The October 2010 issue of the Antitrust Source features a series of articles by distinguished antitrust practitioners on the new horizontal merger guidelines. While the Source has published numerous articles on the proposed merger guidelines revisions, the symposium provided the first collection of essays on the 2010 Guidelines. The essays were not intended to be a comprehensive discourse but were purposely limited to one or two key points on which each author wanted to focus. There has been a general awareness in the antitrust community that an update to the seventeen-year-old Horizontal Merger Guidelines was appropriate, but it is likely that the close working relationship and similarity of views between the current chief economists at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice acted as the tipping point that led to the release of revised guidelines in 2010.