On December 10, a Federal District Court for the District of Oregon granted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a preliminary injunction blocking Kroger’s $24.6 billion acquisition of Albertsons. In a new insight, Director of Competition Policy Fred Ashton reviews the case and considers its future implications for antitrust enforcement.

Key points:

• The Federal District Court found that the merger would substantially lessen competition among traditional supermarkets.
• The FTC’s complaint relied on narrow market definitions and was a mix of long-established antitrust theories of consumer harm and more novel theories involving competition for unionized grocery labor that, in part, served as a test case for some of the changes made in the 2023 Merger Guidelines.
• While the specifics of the case are important to digest, the long-term effects on enforcement policy stem from the court’s endorsement of lower market concentration thresholds and the consideration of labor markets in the 2023 Merger Guidelines.

Read the analysis