This case concerned an acquisition that, if completed, would have combined the only two national, direct broadcast satellite suppliers of television programming.
Retained by Department of Justice and by State Attorneys General
This case concerned an acquisition that, if completed, would have combined the only two national, direct broadcast satellite suppliers of television programming. EchoStar had agreed to acquire Hughes (the parent company of DirecTV) for $26 billion, and, pursuant to Hart-Scott-Rodino, the parties submitted the proposed acquisition to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for approval. Absent the acquisition, these two firms competed with only a single cable television firm each in most markets, and were the only distributors of multi-channel video programming in many rural markets.
The DOJ, joined by more than twenty State Attorneys General, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., opposing the acquisition and the parties subsequently withdrew from the proposed merger.
The DOJ and participating State Attorneys General retained Professor Robert Porter of Northwestern University and Cornerstone Research to evaluate the parties’ statistical analysis of how the proposed merger would affect competition. With Cornerstone Research’s support, Professor Porter explored the parties’ highly complex econometric model specification and the robustness of their results. Professor Porter’s work demonstrated that the merger might result in a much larger price increase than suggested by the parties.
The DOJ, joined by more than twenty State Attorneys General, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., opposing the acquisition and the parties subsequently withdrew from the proposed merger.
In its statement the DOJ said, “We welcome this decision to abandon the transaction. Had this merger gone forward, it would have eliminated competition between the nation’s two most significant direct broadcast satellite services, Hughes’s DirecTV and EchoStar’s DISH Network.”