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Comment by bluedevil2k | Hacker News Reader

States have the ability to sue to block mergers as well as the federal government. See the recent 11 state lawsuit seeking to block the WarnerMount merger.

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Just a couple of months ago, someone was still suing[1] to block Alaska Air/Hawaiian. This is a merger that already entirely went through. I would predict equal likelihood of some state lawsuit derailing a merger like this.

[1] https://viewfromthewing.com/passengers-demand-court-undo-ala...

There's a pretty clear difference between a lawsuit by 8 individuals, vs one filed by attorneys general representing a combined ~100m people.

Nevertheless, I have very little faith in states somehow blocking big mergers. Can you cite an example where this has happened? We've had basically every airline, several supermarket chains, and every major media company go through 1-2 rounds of megamergers. Which, specifically, have been successfully blocked by states?

In 2017, Valero tried to acquire some energy infrastructure owned by Plains All American. The FTC cleared it but California's AG filed to block the deal, which was ultimately abandoned before the trial could begin.

https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2017/10/futur...

Washington state was key to blocking Kroger-Albertsons.

Considering that California is one of the states and it’s Warner Brothers and Paramount, both entertainment companies based in California, the bark has a lot of bite.

Which is funny because regardless of whether or not those states succeed in blocking the merger, those legacy video entertainment businesses will become irrelevant whether they are one business or two, due to the fierce competition from TikTok/Instagram/Reddit/Youtube/Whatsapp/computers/anything on the internet in general.

It's probably the most inconsequential merger, from a consumer standpoint.

Anything can be a monopoly or not, depending on how you define the market.

But not anything is worth litigating. The kids with a lemonade stand on the corner in my neighborhood have a monopoly on that corner.

Video media sellers are dime a dozen these days, and the barrier to entry for selling video media is basically none. Warner brothers and paramount are nowhere near the only business to buy and watch media, and it affects almost no buyers negatively if they merge.

Sure they have ability, they are just not doing it often enough

If it isn’t red states the current admin won’t care at all. If it’s mostly or entirely blue states, they’ll just default to siding with the merger out of spite.

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