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US: Former FTC chairman Leibowitz says he resisted Democratic pressure

By  |  April 16, 2013

Speaking at the American Bar Association’s spring antitrust meeting Thursday, former Federal Trade Commission chairman Jon Leibowitz said he resisted pressure from the Democratic party to block corporate mergers as part of a political agenda. Leibowitz remarked that lawmakers in Congress expected the former chairman to block some mergers and singled out a particular case concerning pharmacy benefit mergers that earned criticism from politicians. Specifically, the merger between Express Scripts Inc. and its competitor Medco Health Solutions Inc., which combined two of the three leaders of the industry, was approved in April of last year by the FTC to the dismay of Congress; Leibowitz described the deal as an example of how the FTC resisted political pressure as lawmakers contacted the authority to block the merger.

Full Content: Thomson Reuters

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