Is the Federal Trade Commission Serious about Premerger Notification?

The 1976 Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Antitrust Improvements Act requires certain firms that are pursuing a merger to submit a Premerger Notification and Report Form, also called an HSR Form, to the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department's Antitrust Division so they can investigate whether the merger would violate antitrust law. FTC officials claim the information reported on the current form is insufficient for this purpose and have proposed changes to the form and its instructions. They say the new requirements would create a more effective and efficient screening for anticompetitive transactions. There is no reason to believe the proposed changes would accomplish this. Instead, they would impose unnecessary compliance costs on the least troubling transactions, with little to no improvement in the agencies' ability to screen for anticompetitive mergers.