Bass, Berry & Sims attorney Luke Smith examined the possible obstacles that the new Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act filing rules issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could pose for future merger and acquisition (M&A) deals. Luke provided insight for an article in Hospice News detailing the new documentation that will be required ahead of deal filings and the added scrutiny expected by the FTC related to its antitrust review of M&A proposals.
“[The form] is changing significantly in ways that are increasing the burden on the parties. The amount of information that the parties have to provide will be much, much more significant, just lots more questions to answer and many more documents to provide to the agencies,” Luke told Hospice News. “The practical impact of that is that it will take significantly longer to prepare the forms and cost significantly more money.”
In speaking about the heightened scrutiny on M&A transactions, Luke said, “The agencies have been very aggressive, especially the FTC, has been very aggressive in all sorts of aspects in the antitrust world, specifically with health care. There’s a lot of private equity roll up activity happening in health care, and they have filed lawsuits to basically unroll some that have happened. The FTC is really heavily focused on health care.”
The full article, “New FTC Regulations Could Create Obstacles for Hospice M&A,” was published by Hospice News on October 24 and is available online.
Luke presented at a webinar, “New Rules, New Hurdles: How the New HSR Rules Will Impact How You Do Deals,” on October 21. Click here to watch the on-demand version of this webinar.