> Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business

The number of such mergers, globally every year, is countable on two hands. They involve the wealth of nations (this one’s similar to Malta’s GDP [1][2]).

It would be unreasonable to permanently staff the regulatory force that would be required to quickly review such deals in any industry.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

[2] https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-to-Acqui...

>They involve the wealth of nations

Do they though? People often compare rich people or companies to a country GDP's, but GDP is based on a single year. The size of a company's bank account is not. A year is pretty arbitrary. In some sense it's like saying the distance between New York and Washington is 200 miles which is not that long, because a Ferrari's top speed is 200 mph.

> it's like saying the distance between New York and Washington is 200 miles which is not that long, because a Ferrari's top speed is 200 mph

It’s saying the distance is within a class negotiable by a Ferrari.

In the GDP to value case, we’re saying that the consideration at hand is comparable to all of the work of a small country for a year. So the care the latter gets is in the same class as the care the former should receive.

I don't understand. If there are several per year, and they're going to take a couple months even at maximum speed, then permanently staffing the regulatory force sounds very reasonable to me! (For the US and EU which are going to weigh in on a big fraction.)

Why would you want to be hiring and firing constantly?

> permanently staffing the regulatory force sounds very reasonable

There are permanent staff. There are also legions of industry experts contracted on a case by case basis. Full staff on standby would mean having, on retainer, experts in every industry where a merger might happen.

There are permanent staff. The issue of time isn't any individual regulator - it's that there's regulators in every country they operate in. And the company is negotiating with them all simultaneously - figuring out what would make the EU say yes, and then taking that to the US and see if that will let them say yes, then going to Japan and making sure they'll say yes, then going to India - and you don't want some of them knowing that everyone else has already said yes, because then they'll hold out to get some last special thing.

These are complicated negotiations, in many complicated jurisdictions.

How quick do you think they should be? For everyone to understand the potential ramifications and consult appropriate industry experts? Let competitors et al file briefs?

Once they get working on it, I would think they could get consultation and competitor briefs back within a month. Then have an initial answer within two months of the announcement, and if that answer is a "no" they'd have a good idea of what would need to be changed.

And I don't see a great reason that negotiations should more than triple that amount of time. If they're not budging, make the "no" final. So two months initial, six months max, would be good numbers.

If the company wants to negotiate with everyone in serial... that's their problem.

> and you don't want some of them knowing that everyone else has already said yes, because then they'll hold out to get some last special thing

Wasn't the thesis of this comment line that government regulators are being slow or being a problem? This supports that idea, I think.

> If they're not budging, make the "no" final. So two months initial, six months max, would be good numbers

Have you been proximate to a merger?

Or, maybe we could make attempts to regulate our market economy in order to prevent monopolies, and thereby encouraging competition. (aka, disruption)

I didn't truly process the damage that monopolies can do until I heard this podcast with Sean Carroll and Cory Doctorow.

There is a full transcript at this link if you prefer to read the conversation.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/10/21/69-c...

As I said, I'm quite happy with that, but if we do something, let's do it right and not half-assed.

When the powers that be decide to block a merger, they have to make the case. There's looking at the proposed merger and being able to say "this is bad and may be antitrust," and then there's actually making the case when it comes down to it. That takes time. And you can expect companies like Adobe to fight rather than just saying "oh, you don't like this? OK. We'll withdraw."

The DOJ and other bodies voiced opposition early on. They signaled quickly that they were not in favor of this. The interim between those actions and today were the regulatory bodies actively making cases against it and/or negotiating with Adobe & Figma how they could proceed in a way that the regulatory bodies would want to approve of the deal.

The whole idea that this was "half-assed" in some way is misguided.

Note that I worked for Red Hat while IBM was acquiring it. It took from (IIRC) October 2018 to July 2019 without strong opposition. When you're talking about companies that have that much impact on a market, it takes a while.

And it should -- the larger market doesn't benefit from waking up to find out that a major software supplier has been gobbled up overnight. You can see the pain that VMware employees + customers are going through right now and they've had a lot of time to process the idea.

I agree there. We seem to be recovering from a cycle of not caring about monopolies at all, and corporations are now as strong as they were in the late 19th century. I am not surprised that anti-trust is slow and unpredictable today. I hope that we settle into a more predictable regime, no matter which political party is in power.

For historical references, anti-trust filings began against Standard Oil in 1906, and it was broken up in 1911. [0]

The AT&T breakup took four years, from 1978 to 1982. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T

This would have gone quickly, to no, if Figma and Adobe had taken the first answer they got from DoJ at face value.

Lina Khan is insane, it would be absurd to take her at face value. If it was up to her, American tech businesses would close up shop and go home.

You're getting downvotes, but IMO it's because people don't realize how far outside the norm Lina Khan's stances and approach has been.

Your completely correct if you mean the norm since the 80's when antitrust enforcement was abandoned. Her stances completely align with the standing anti-laws and regulations that have existed for over 80 years. The anti-trust bar and big business have been trying to redefine what anti-trust is for the past 30-40 years which is what got us into this mess of giant firms and too big to fail economics. The perspective that bringing back regulatory action is outside the norm shows just how skewed economic thinking has been in the US.

It's not just "regulatory action" that the FTC under Khan is embarking on - it's outright hostility and refusal to even work with companies she personally doesn't like.

There is a difference between enforcing laws and then just trying to burn down everything you touch. Khan is embarking on the latter quest (see the way she tried to handle the Within Unlimited acquisition.)

It would be different if the FTC actually attempted to engage in good faith. As someone that has seen them in action recently, they do not.

"The norm" is doing a lot of lifting there.

Trailing historical average doesn't opine on correctness/utility.

It certainly seems "outside the norm" if you compare to the hands off approach that has been taken the past few decades.

It's irrelevant anyway, Lina Khan's views were well known at the time of her selection, this is the desired outcome by Biden.

I don't know anything about the Adobe / Figma situation, but "If you just don't question the government they won't make your life so hard" doesn't seem like a very strong response to accusations of overreach.

By all means question the government! And take them to court!

Just don't disagree with them and engage lawyers AND then complain about how long "the process" is taking.

> it's better for consumers and the market if competitors fight to the (metaphorical) death instead

I never understand why this is the only other option. If you're in a town and open a coffee shop, and someone else opens a coffee shop, if the town is big enough, you can both thrive. You don't have to try to take out the competition. But every big corporation decides it's the only option.

Because if you are the only one selling coffee, you can jack up the prices and keep the returns growing as they are required to.

That deal had more to do with national security concerns being addressed and Broadcom's shitty business strategy rather than market share concerns.

VMW-AVGO was held up by the Chinese and South Korean regulators - it gets geopolitical. sure would be nice if everything was clear and clean for businesses but also it would be nice if I had a pony and magic shoes.