Antitrust Lawyer Blog Commentary on Current Developments

Articles Tagged with applied materials

On April 27, 2015, the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) Antitrust Division released a statement regarding Applied Materials Inc. (“AMAT”) and Tokyo Electron’s (“TEL”) joint announcement that they abandoned their merger.  The Antitrust Division’s statement indicates that the transaction was blocked because the combination would have diminished innovation.  In other words, the Antitrust Division was concerned about the potential loss of head to head competition in the development of future cutting edge semiconductor products and made no allegation that the combined firm would have monopolized any existing or actual product market.  The Antitrust Division’s tough stance against AMAT indicates that it is willing to scrutinize and challenge deals that raise longer-term anticompetitive concerns related to future competition even if there is no past pricing evidence that may predict that the merger will result in higher prices regarding actual products.

Background

On September 24, 2013, AMAT and TEL announced a definitive agreement to merge via an all-stock combination, which valued the new combined company at approximately $29 billion.  The companies claimed that securing regulatory clearances should not be a problem because their product offerings were highly complementary with few overlaps.  Indeed, AMAT was strong in markets where Tokyo Electron was not and vice versa.  In areas, where they directly competed, the combined shares were low.  Nevertheless, the transaction would have combined AMAT, the largest semiconductor equipment supplier in the world, with TEL, the third largest equipment supplier.

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