Deals
Summers Says Tougher US M&A Rules Seem Like ‘War on Business’
- New guidelines are ‘substantial risk,’ he says on Bloomberg TV
- Rules are part of effort to counter some firms’ domination
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Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warned that the Biden administration’s crackdown on mergers and acquisitions through a sweeping overhaul of rules the government uses to determine whether deals violate competition law “seems almost like a war on business.”
“These guidelines — by moving away from an emphasis on lower prices for consumers to broader abstractions — are a substantial risk,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin. “I wish that this stepping back and offering merger guidelines had been taken as an opportunity to rationalize the policy.”