Is America’s Merger Fever Breaking?
In the summer of 1982, the United States government sent corporate America a love letter. President Ronald Reagan’s top antitrust official, William Baxter, who made no secret of his desire to use his position to assist the country’s largest companies, issued the Justice Department’s new merger guidelines, instructing staff how to determine whether a merger violated antitrust laws and should be blocked. Baxter’s new rules made it clear to big business that federal agencies would no longer limit their ability to amass power. An era of nearly unrestricted corporate consolidation followed.