{"id":24415,"date":"2020-05-05T17:06:59","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T00:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=24415"},"modified":"2020-05-05T17:06:59","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T00:06:59","slug":"merger-freeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=24415","title":{"rendered":"MERGER FREEZE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A group of Democratic representatives sent a letter to House leadership on Tuesday pushing for a freeze on most mergers in the next coronavirus relief package.<\/p>\n<p>Rep.\u00a0David Cicilline\u00a0(D-R.I.), chairman of the House Judiciary\u00a0antitrust subcommittee, is leading the letter, which\u00a0backers include\u00a0Energy and Commerce consumer protection subcommittee chair Jan\u00a0Schakowsky (D-Ill.), leadership member Rep.\u00a0Jamie Raskin\u00a0(D-Md.) and progressive lawmakers Reps.\u00a0Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u00a0(D-N.Y.),\u00a0Pramil<wbr \/>a Jayapal\u00a0(D-Wash.) and\u00a0Mark Pocan\u00a0(D-Wis.).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPowerful corporations and private equity firms are standing ready to exploit this crisis for unfair financial gain. We know that market consolidation produces higher prices and few choices for consumers, lower wages for workers, and contributes to grotesque levels of economic inequality,\u201d Cicilline said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo protect American consumers and workers, the next COVID-19 relief package should include a merger moratorium for transactions that do not involve firms that are truly failing and have exhausted all other options or are in bankruptcy proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The letter to House Speaker\u00a0Nancy Pelosi\u00a0(D-Calif.) and House Minority Leader\u00a0Kevin McCarthy\u00a0(R-Calif.) calls for an exception for mergers involving the purchase of a severely distressed company that would otherwise likely go bankrupt.<\/p>\n<p>Cicilline first proposed a merger moratorium during the pandemic last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A group of Democratic representatives sent&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24416,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24415\/revisions\/24416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}