The FTC is estimated to have made this investigation to determine if companies are acting against antitrust laws due to any abnormality in their purchases. The requested data covers all purchases from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2019. Small purchases are also requested Pointing out that digital technology companies are a big part of the economy and our daily life, FTC President Joe Simons said that with the initiative of the Commission, they will have the opportunity to take a closer look at the purchases in this important sector. Simons noted that alerting federal institutions to transactions that could harm competition is important to keep the technology markets open and competitive, and to benefit consumers. Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act, companies must report details of their specific purchase to the FTC, but if the purchase is not a certain size, the company does not have to report it to the FTC. This FTC request also includes small purchases. Some of them may not even know the public. In addition to purchases not reported under the HSR Act, FTC requests these 5 technology companies to provide the following information: Company purchasing strategies Voting and board appointment strategies Agreements on recruiting key personnel from other companies Post-employment non-competition contracts Post-purchase product development and pricing, including whether and how to integrate purchased assets and how they are made, how the purchased data is processed Although the demand for FTC is thought to be somewhat annoying, it is not expected that there will be a problem with the above-mentioned five companies providing data on the purchases of the last 10 years to the FTC. The FTC is expected to act if it discovers an abnormality in the data.
