Tag: Bureau of Competition

In an administrative complaint issued on October 25, 2001, the Commission challenged the February 2001 purchase of the Water Division and Engineered Construction Division of Pitt-Des Moines, Inc. alleging that the consummated merger significantly reduced competition in four separate markets involving the design and construction of various types of field-erected specialty industrial storage tanks in the United States. On June 27, 2003, an administrative law judge upheld the complaint and ordered the divestiture all of the assets acquired in the acquisition. In December 2004, the Commission approved an interim consent order prohibiting Chicago Bridge & Iron from altering the assets acquired from Pitt-Des Moines, Inc. except “in the ordinary course of business.” These assets included but were not limited to real property; personal property; equipment; inventories; and intellectual property. On January 7, 2005 the Commission upheld in part the ruling of an administrative law judge that Chicago Bridge & Iron’s acquisition of the Water Division and the Engineered Construction Division of Pitt-Des Moines, Inc. created a near-monopoly in four separate markets involving the design and construction of various types of field-erected specialty industrial storage tanks in the United States. In an effort to restore competition as it existed prior to the merger, the Commission ordered Chicago Bridge to reorganize the relevant product business into two separate, stand-alone, viable entities capable of competing in the markets described in the complaint and to divest one of those entities within six months. On January 25, 2008 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the Commission's order.  In November 2008, the Commission approved divestiture of the assets to Matrix Service Company.

In December 2007, the Commission challenged ValueAct Capital Partners’ violations of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Pre-Merger Notification Act’s filing requirements related to the acquisition of stock in three companies, Gartner, Inc., Catalina marketing Group, and Acxiom Corp. The firm previously violated the HSR filing requirements in 2003, and after making corrective filings, and agreeing to put HSR safeguards into place to ensure compliance with the filing requirements, the Commission decided to take no action. However, ValueAct failed to enact the necessary preventative measures and again violated the HSR filing requirements with its aforementioned acquisitions resulting in the Commission seeking civil penalties in the amount of $1.1 million.