Antitrust and Trade Regulation: Justice Department, FTC Announce Changes in Hart-Scott-Rodino Form

On July 7, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission announced that they "have made changes to reduce the filing burden and streamline the form parties must file when seeking antitrust clearance of proposed mergers and acquisitions under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act and the Premerger Notification Rules." According to the Justice Department's press release, the revised HSR form "deletes several categories of information that over time have proven unnecessary in a preliminary merger review, will require filers to provide the Department and the FTC "with narrowly focused additional documents that will help expedite the merger review process," and "changes certain kinds of required reporting, such as revenue information by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code, and the identity of holders and holdings of the entities making a filing."