Antitrust Nominee Has Eye On Ag Mergers
March 17, 2009 A nominee to be head of the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division says she will take action against anti-competitive behavior in the agriculture industry.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Christine Anne Varney, nominee to be assistant attorney general of the Antitrust Division, said she does not agree with the direction taken by the Antitrust Division under the Bush Administration when dealing with consolidations in agriculture.
In response to questioning from Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), Varney said, "Agriculture will be a priority of mine," she added, "I do intend to go through, with the Department of Justice, all of the activity they’ve taken and not undertaken in the agricultural sector in the last eight years."
Varney says she is open to taking a retroactive look at recently completed mergers and would not allow mergers through so-called "private agreements". "If a merger is anticompetitive, I intend to block it. If a merger has an anticompetitive aspect that can be remedied, it will of course follow the procedures outlined in the Tunney Act so that we do create a consent, that the consent goes before the courts and that the public has a chance to comment on that before it becomes final."
The Tunney Act, passed in 1974, governs the judicial review of antitrust consent decrees proposed by the Department of Justice.
(Source: BrownfieldAgNews)
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