Originally Posted by
DontCallMeCindy
The NEA was a completely different animal than B6 + NK. It was essentially geographically-defined virtual merger between an LCC and a legacy. There wasn’t much case law to support two companies being able to coordinate operations like that wo going through the established antitrust/M&A process.
B6+NK is a conventional full-on merger. There is a large corpus of administrative/statutory/case law history governing the pathway to approval. The DOJ can’t just block it on a whim, they have to support their claim that it will hurt competition, which I expect will be an uphill battle given that B6 + NK combined will still be way smaller than any of the big 4. We also have plenty of data showing that B6 has a larger impact on price vs. NK, because we compete directly w/the legacies on price and product, over the same finite pool of consumers
I’m confident at the end of the day, the politicians will posture, we’ll divest a few gates and slots here and there, and we’ll get through it.
Exactly, there is zero precedent in the NEA and the judge was left with only deciding based on anti-trust law and in this specific case he ruled pretty much the only way he could with what was before him. The merger has a ton of precedent that the court will need to balance as well as anti-trust laws.