Word: ftc
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Britney Spears' warblings will now be $2 to $5 cheaper at a music store near you. The music biz's Big Five - Sony, Bertelsmann, EMI, Universal and Time Warner (corporate cousin to this web site) - which control 85 percent of the $15 billion CD market, settled with the FTC Wednesday on charges that they've been leaning for years on music retailers to fix CD prices by threatening to withhold promotional budgets from stores that don't adhere to a so-called "minimum advertised price" (MAP). The three-year price-fixing binge, according to FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky, cost consumers...
...aggressive application of antitrust law in Washington," says TIME legal correspondent Adam Cohen. "This case, just like Microsoft, probably wouldn't have been brought five years ago." And with Time Warner not only looking to merge its music division with that of EMI but also hoping the FTC will approve its swallowing by AOL, a no-fuss settlement is an excellent way to signal to the trustbusters that it's a gentle giant. "In this climate, it doesn't want to look like it's using its size or connections unfairly," says Cohen. Click here to forward this story...
...order to get around the government's objections, the firms announced Wednesday that they'd reached an agreement to sell Arco's Alaska holdings to Phillips Petroleum for about $6 billion. The court, in turn, was expected to suspend court hearings indefinitely, with the FTC vowing to sit back down with the firms and make a good-faith effort to hammer out a deal. Of course, this is all still cold comfort to drivers on the West Coast who, for a different reason - OPEC production controls - are currently paying nearly $2 per gallon...
...plan unleashed a fire storm: six lawsuits; separate investigations by the FTC and the states of New York and Michigan; and a mess of bad press. But it wasn't until the company's stock plunged and two key business partners--Altavista and Kozmo--broke ranks that DoubleClick finally backed down. "I made a mistake," said CEO Kevin O'Connor, whose $1.7 billion purchase last fall of tracking data from Abacus Direct alerted privacy watchdogs that something was afoot...
...irony is that BP Amoco-Arco would be less than half the size of Exxon Mobil. But the FTC voiced concerns that the move would stifle competition on the U.S.'s West Coast, with BP Amoco-Arco controlling 45 percent of the oil refined in California, Oregon and Washington. This won't be the last you hear about this - the heads of British-based BP Amoco and L.A.-based Arco have long said that they would fight regulators to the bitter...