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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business

The number of such mergers, globally every year, is countable on two hands. They involve the wealth of nations (this one’s similar to Malta’s GDP [1][2]).

It would be unreasonable to permanently staff the regulatory force that would be required to quickly review such deals in any industry.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

[2] https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-to-Acqui...

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>They involve the wealth of nations

Do they though? People often compare rich people or companies to a country GDP's, but GDP is based on a single year. The size of a company's bank account is not. A year is pretty arbitrary. In some sense it's like saying the distance between New York and Washington is 200 miles which is not that long, because a Ferrari's top speed is 200 mph.

> it's like saying the distance between New York and Washington is 200 miles which is not that long, because a Ferrari's top speed is 200 mph

It’s saying the distance is within a class negotiable by a Ferrari.

In the GDP to value case, we’re saying that the consideration at hand is comparable to all of the work of a small country for a year. So the care the latter gets is in the same class as the care the former should receive.

I don't understand. If there are several per year, and they're going to take a couple months even at maximum speed, then permanently staffing the regulatory force sounds very reasonable to me! (For the US and EU which are going to weigh in on a big fraction.)

Why would you want to be hiring and firing constantly?

There are permanent staff. The issue of time isn't any individual regulator - it's that there's regulators in every country they operate in. And the company is negotiating with them all simultaneously - figuring out what would make the EU say yes, and then taking that to the US and see if that will let them say yes, then going to Japan and making sure they'll say yes, then going to India - and you don't want some of them knowing that everyone else has already said yes, because then they'll hold out to get some last special thing.

These are complicated negotiations, in many complicated jurisdictions.

How quick do you think they should be? For everyone to understand the potential ramifications and consult appropriate industry experts? Let competitors et al file briefs?

Once they get working on it, I would think they could get consultation and competitor briefs back within a month. Then have an initial answer within two months of the announcement, and if that answer is a "no" they'd have a good idea of what would need to be changed.

And I don't see a great reason that negotiations should more than triple that amount of time. If they're not budging, make the "no" final. So two months initial, six months max, would be good numbers.

If the company wants to negotiate with everyone in serial... that's their problem.

> and you don't want some of them knowing that everyone else has already said yes, because then they'll hold out to get some last special thing

Wasn't the thesis of this comment line that government regulators are being slow or being a problem? This supports that idea, I think.

> If they're not budging, make the "no" final. So two months initial, six months max, would be good numbers

Have you been proximate to a merger?

> permanently staffing the regulatory force sounds very reasonable

There are permanent staff. There are also legions of industry experts contracted on a case by case basis. Full staff on standby would mean having, on retainer, experts in every industry where a merger might happen.

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