Ford, FCA, and Merger Talk at the Dinner Table

Steve, you seem preoccupied with the notion that any FCA merger would be opposed by DoJ, without offering any evidence of why this should be so. Having lost on AT&T/Time Warner, and being ready to pass TMobile/Sprint (which would be far more anti-competitive than any automotive merger could be) there is no basis for DoJ to suddenly rise up and oppose FCA/anybody. Ain't gonna happen - and I say this as a corporate lawyer who has dealt with antitrust issues for 40+ years

@ect "Having lost on AT&T/Time Warner," Companies in different industries: one content, one delivery. Not fundamentally different from Comcast/NBC/Universal. "TMobile/Sprint" T-Mobile and Sprint combined market share is about 30%, still below T and VZ which hold about 34% each. You could argue that the increased size of T-Mobile and Sprint together makes them a more viable competitor to T And VZ, so the merger actually improves competition. On the other hand, I followed the attempted merger of Office Depot and Staples in the late 90s very closely. OD and Staples argued that everyone and their cousin carried pencils and paper, therefore their merger was not anti-competitive. I was intimately familiar with OD's operations. In no way could OD and Staples, big box discounters that sold in volume to the SOHO sector, with delivery services, be compared to K-Mart's "back to school" department. As soon as the proposed merger was announced, I said "there is no way the government will let #1 and #2 in the industry merge". I was right. The smaller fish in the sector were gobbled up. Staples took over Corporate Express. Boise Office Products took over Office Max and took the Office Max name, then OD took over Office Max. But, to this day, #1 and #2, Staples and OD, are separate companies. I'm old enough to remember when Radio Shack took over Allied Radio, another electronics store chain, exactly like RS. The government broke that one up, forced RS to divest Allied. I stand by my assessment. The government will not let two auto sellers in the US combine if their combined market share is greater than GM's, even though GM has frittered away most of the market share it used to have, thus lowering the bar.

@Steve203 The '90s was quite a while ago. Since then, a number of industries have consolidated back to 3-4 major players, without any pushback by DoJ or FTC. There are at least 12 companies with a significant share of the US auto market, so it's hard to argue that reducing this number by 1 or 2 is going to substantially reduce competition. A blanket assertion that DoJ would contest any combination in the auto sector is, IMO, not supported by (in fact, contrary to) real world experience in the 21st century to date and so cannot be considered a sure thing. One can never say never, of course, but I certainly don't see the DoJ leopard suddenly changing its spots. Especially under the current Administration.