USA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Bradley Justus, Lisl Dunlop, Josh Jowdy and Sandhya Taneja, Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider LLP
son agrees, affirming his intention to establish a “realistic remedies program” that departs from the all-or-nothing approach of his predecessor at the FTC. In these statements, the agencies have indicated a strong preference for structural remedies over behavioural remedies, of which they remain largely sceptical. This signalled openness to divestitures has already borne fruit for parties: in May 2025, the FTC announced a negotiated settlement in a merger of competing software providers whose products are used in the design and manufacture of semiconductors. Under the consent order, both the Buyer (Synopsys) and Target (Ansys) will divest assets related to their software tools to an identified third-party divestiture buyer. The FTC maintains the divestiture order “will pre - serve competition across several software tool markets that are critical for the design of semi - conductors and light simulation devices” and, in so doing, ”help protect consumers from higher input prices for cars, smartphones, cameras, tel - evisions, and other critical products”. The FTC announced that its negotiated resolution of this matter came after close collaboration with com - petition agencies in the EU, the UK, Japan, and South Korea to analyse the proposed acquisition and potential remedies. Private equity The agencies have also signalled a break from the Biden administration’s overt scepticism of transactions involving private equity. In January 2025, just before President Trump took office, now-Chair Ferguson criticised the Democratic Commissioners’ overt “antipathy toward private equity” as reflected in public statements by Chair Khan throughout her tenure at the FTC prioritising scrutiny of private equity- backed consolidation and ”roll-up” strategies.
In approving a settlement of an enforcement action related to serial acquisitions of anaes - thesia practices in Texas, now-Chair Ferguson (joined by Commissioner Holyoak) distinguished his approach from his Democratic colleagues by explaining “[t]hat [the acquirer] Welsh Carson is a private equity firm is irrelevant; the antitrust anal - ysis would be the same if Welsh Carson were, for example, an individual or institutional investor”. At the DOJ, as of May 2025, AAG Slater has not yet publicly commented on how private equity features into her enforcement agenda (if at all). Still, her selection of private equity veteran Bill Rinner as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General suggests the DOJ will be less broadly suspicious of private equity than the prior administration. This should not suggest that private equity will not be subject to continued merger control enforcement under the Trump administration: Chair Ferguson concurred in the enforcement action against Welsh Carson in the anaesthe - sia clinic challenge, and the FTC’s first merger control complaint in the Trump administration happens to have involved a private equity buyer (though the complaint makes little of this fact). It appears that going forward, parties can expect that the fact that a transaction involves private equity will not itself invite additional scrutiny from the agencies as a separate basis for anti - trust concern. Policy agenda of the second Trump administration Statements from agency heads have also indi - cated some of the non-competition policy issues that will be of interest to the administration. At the FTC, Chair Ferguson’s first official act described Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives as “a scourge on our institutions” that ”violates federal and natural law” by “dividing
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