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US: Antitrust Institute challenges Staples’ merger with Office Depot

By  |  July 23, 2015

The American Antitrust Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to take a deep and critical look at the proposed $6.3 billion merger between Boca Raton-based Office Depot and Framingham, Mass.-based Staples.

The institute issued a white paper titled “The Proposed Merger of Staples and Office Depot: Lessons from History and New Competitive Concerns.” The paper urges the FTC to carefully scrutinize the competitive impact of the proposed $6.3 billion Staples-Office Depot merger.

“This is a watershed deal for antitrust,” said Diana Moss, the institute’s president. “The proposed merger raises a number of threshold questions.”

The white paper warns that the deal’s biggest threat could be to the merging companies’ biggest customers: national and multiregional businesses that buy office supplies through negotiated long-term contracts.

Full content: Benzinga

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