R. Hewitt Pate, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said this week that he is leaving his post. This gives the Bush administration an opportunity to appoint someone who will ignore empty political grandstanding and make forward-looking decisions on two recent telecom mergers. Both the SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI mergers will need a nod of approval from the Department of Justice (DOJ) before being finalized, but already consumer groups are objecting. For instance, in a press release this week, both Consumers Union (CU) and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) said they opposed the Verizon/MCI merger because of predicted harm to competition and prices for consumers.
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Merger Memories
Posted by: Sonia Arrison May 13, 2005 05:00 AMR. Hewitt Pate, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said this week that he is leaving his post. This gives the Bush administration an opportunity to appoint someone who will ignore empty political grandstanding and make forward-looking decisions on two recent telecom mergers. Both the SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI mergers will need a nod of approval from the Department of Justice (DOJ) before being finalized, but already consumer groups are objecting. For instance, in a press release this week, both Consumers Union (CU) and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) said they opposed the Verizon/MCI merger because of predicted harm to competition and prices for consumers.