Donald Trump’s hands (Jabin Botsford/Getty Images)

Wall Street expects Trump to open the merger floodgates

The incoming Trump admin has dealmakers ready to consolidate so fast they might forget to pass go and collect $200.

11/14/24 2:52PM

There are many unknowns around President-elect Donald Trump’s next term, but one thing is certain: Wall Street is frothing for his administration to open the merger floodgates.

The expected firing of both FTC chair Lina Khan and DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter is fueling the excitement. Both Biden admin appointees have led their respective agencies to historic levels of merger challenges, accusing industries including Big Tech, Big Grocery, Big Aviation, and Big Mattress of anticompetitive behavior. Many analysts are expecting Trump, who’s pledged to roll back a “regulatory onslaught” by the federal government, to significantly rein in antitrust enforcement.

Since Trump’s victory last week, shares of ready-to-consolidate companies have surged, with dealmakers expecting a rush of M&A activity and industry consolidation to follow his inauguration. Goldman Sachs analysts expect merger moves to jump 20% in Trump’s first year in office, making up for a 15% drop this year.

Capital One, which announced plans to scoop up Discover for $35 billion back in February, is up about 12% since the day before the election. Discover is up 15% in the same time. Together, the companies would create the country’s biggest credit-card issuer. Critics have said the combined company would have tremendous market power, holding nearly a third of consumers with low credit scores, and could hike interchange fees on small businesses.

There are also grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, which together have spent more than a billion dollars over two years trying to get their $24.6 billion merger past the FTC. The combined $200 billion grocer would have 5,000 US stores and 720,000 employees, and regulators have warned it could suppress supermarket wages and create localized monopolies. Kroger reached a 52-week high on November 11.

Other merger-purgatory companies that’ve seen a Trump boost to their shares: Frontier and Spirit (the airlines restarted their on-again, off-again merger talks last month), Humana (its discussions with Cigna have reportedly revived), and UnitedHealth (the DOJ opted to delay making a decision on its deal to acquire home health company Amedisys until after the election).

Executives have expressed consolidation optimism, too. On an earnings call last week, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said the incoming Trump admin could offer “an opportunity for consolidation… that would provide a real positive and accelerated impact on this industry.” Counter to Zaslav’s optimism however, many Hollywood writers, showrunners, and executives told Sherwood News that excessive entertainment-industry consolidation (Hollywood saw $400 billion in megamergers between 2009 and 2020) has created a massive labor contraction in film and TV.

This week, the president of the widely reviled Live Nation said he’s “hopeful” that the company will “see a return to the more traditional antitrust approach” under Trump. Biden’s DOJ proposed breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster in its May lawsuit, but Live Nation’s stock and hopes for a dismissal have risen postelection.

I think states will step in and say, “Not on my watch.”

There are some signs that investors and execs could be a bit overly optimistic and that the next Trump term may not be friendly to mergers across the board. While megamergers like Disney’s $71 billion purchase of Fox and the $69 billion merger of CVS and Aetna occurred under Trump’s first admin, others were fought. Both the DOJ’s antitrust case against Google’s search business and the FTC’s monopoly case against Meta began under Trump’s first admin (although the FTC refiled a tougher version under Khan in 2021). The President-elect has repeatedly said he’ll block Nippon Steel’s $14 billion acquisition of US Steel.

“I’d say it’s probably going to be pretty similar, where they’re going to let a bunch of big mergers fly through and then pick a couple of politically salient fights, things that would kind of please the conservative base,” said Pat Garofalo, director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of The Billionaire Boondoggle.

According to Garofalo, antitrust enforcers at the state level were reinvigorated under the Biden admin. With many still in power, they could continue high-profile cases against mergers without the federal government’s support or involvement. The FTC is joined by nine states in its suit to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger, and 17 states in its antitrust fight with Amazon. Thirty-eight states joined the DOJ in its antitrust lawsuit against Google. State-level resistance, Garofalo says, is easier to predict than the second Trump admin’s antitrust strategy.

“There, I’m more confident in saying yes, I think they will step in and say, ‘Not on my watch,’” Garofalo said. “The politics of it work for them on kind of two levels, right? They’ve already been leaning into this and reaping political benefits, and now there’s the added element of, ‘We are resisting Trump.’”

If Wall Street is right, and the M&A boom is allowed to rev up again under Trump’s second administration, Garofalo believes we already know the outcome.

“There’s very good evidence that as local areas get more concentrated, wages go down and prices go up, right? It doesn’t take physicists to figure out that that’s what would happen,” he said. “All the evidence shows that those sorts of things lower wages, raise prices, and in the case of healthcare, create worse health outcomes for everyone.”

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Max Knoblauch6/15/26

WSJ: DOJ approved the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal even as investigators were leaning toward suing to stop it

The Justice Department’s approval of Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of rival Warner Bros. Discovery Friday came as a surprise to the agency’s antitrust investigators, according to Wall Street Journal reporting.

Per the WSJ, a team of lawyers who’d scrutinized the merger were leaning toward recommending a lawsuit to block the deal, but hadn’t gotten to make their final recommendation, before they were told that it had been approved on Friday.

Antitrust investigators typically make a final recommendation to the agency in the review process — and that recommendation is often followed by the agency — but that step was reportedly skipped in this instance. Last month, Semafor reported that senior DOJ antitrust officials appeared likely to approve the Paramount-WBD combo.

The deal could still face antitrust challenges from a collection of states led by California, and EU regulators.

Exclusive | Justice Department Decision to Allow Paramount Deal Surprised Staff Investigators

The deal could still face antitrust challenges from a collection of states led by California, and EU regulators.

Jake Lahut6/10/26

Strait of Hormuz is closed to all oil tankers and commercial ships, Iran military says

In retaliation to US strikes, the Islamic Republic of Iran announced that the Strait of Hormuz is fully closed as of early Thursday morning in Tehran. The attacks from the US were separate from a series of retaliatory drone and missile launches overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.

President Donald Trump told Fox News in a phone interview on Wednesday night that “the bombing will stop soon,” but if Iran doesn’t sign the agreement put forward by special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, “we’ll bomb the shit out of them tomorrow night.”

When asked whether the ceasefire still stands, Trump described it as “the most violated ceasefire in the history of the world,” per Fox News.

According to Al Jazeerah, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported that Iran’s joint military command specified that any oil tankers or other commercial vessels will be attacked if they attempt to cross the strait.

This is the second day in a row hostilities have resumed to a level not seen since the early April ceasefire was announced.

US CENTCOM announced the series of strikes beginning at 5:15 p.m. ET on Wednesday, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth previewed in on-camera remarks, promising to “strike ’em hard tonight” before later saying he would not broadcast whether the military would take any action.

Shortly after the announcement on the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial vessel traffic, Iranian state media reported that two ships attempting to cross were attacked.

This story is developing.

Iran’s top joint military command says Strait of Hormuz closed

When asked whether the ceasefire still stands, Trump described it as “the most violated ceasefire in the history of the world,” per Fox News.

This is the second day in a row hostilities have resumed to a level not seen since the early April ceasefire was announced.

Shortly after the announcement on the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial vessel traffic, Iranian state media reported that two ships attempting to cross were attacked.

This story is developing.

Jake Lahut6/9/26

United States and Iran trade retaliatory strikes, escalating war and rattling ceasefire

The war in Iran is heating back up. Overnight, both sides have been trading hostilities in a series of retaliations to other retaliations.

It marks the most robust escalation in combat since the April 8 ceasefire announcement.

Oil prices were little changed, with Brent crude futures down 0.48% as of 5:30 a.m. ET. At the same time, S&P 500 futures were down nearly 0.7% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had slipped 1.18%, as the escalations compounded a broader AI sell-off.

Travel stocks, like United Airlines and Royal Caribbean, which got a boost on Tuesday as oil prices fell, lost some of those gains in premarket trading. Meanwhile, oil giants such as Chevron and Exxon ticked higher and chipmakers such as Arm Holdings and Micron continued to slip.

The escalation ladder began ratcheting back up when Iran shot down an American helicopter with a drone while it was patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, a US official told NBC News. US forces then conducted strikes in Iran’s Qeshm Island, Sirik, Jask, and Bandar Abbas, according to Al Jazeera. In response, Iran attacked a US fleet in Bahrain, Al Jazeera also reported.

“The Iranians are trying to make clear that any attack on them would be responded to, regardless of the size and the scope,” Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in the US told Al Jazeera. “Now, of course, whether they are seeking to escalate the situation or de-escalate remains to be seen, and it will be very much measured by how they calibrated their response by attacking these US bases.”

The scope of the strikes and counterstrikes broadened out as of early Wednesday morning in Iran. Kuwait activated its air defense systems to intercept strikes, its army announced.

Mohamed Vall, a reporter for Al Jazeera reporting from inside Iran, described “a lot of activity in terms of air defence by the Iranians, and they talked about the downing of a helicopter, an American MQ-9 [drone] over Bushehr. So that gives you an idea about the scope of these attacks and counterattacks, or these retaliations across the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf region tonight.”

Iran’s IRGC also reported targeting a hangar for American F-35 jets in Jordan, Al Jazeera reported.

Iran threatens wider escalation following retaliatory strike on US base in Bahrain

The scope of the strikes and counterstrikes broadened out as of early Wednesday morning in Iran. Kuwait activated its air defense systems to intercept strikes, its army announced.

Iran’s IRGC also reported targeting a hangar for American F-35 jets in Jordan, Al Jazeera reported.

Jon Keegan6/5/26

New York legislature passes 1-year data center moratorium

The New York state legislature has passed a one-year ban on large data centers in the state.

The bill now heads to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk, where it faces an uncertain fate. If Hochul signs the bill, it would become the first such statewide ban to succeed in becoming law.

That’s far from certain, as Hochul has opposed state-level legislation over data centers. In May, Hochul said, “This is a local decision for municipalities, its land use, which is the purview of local governments. It’s not a statewide approach necessarily, but it’s something I’m looking at intensely.”

In April, Maine Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a similar statewide moratorium on data centers.

Opposition to data centers is growing rapidly across the US. A federal data center moratorium bill was introduced in March, and at least 14 states have proposed pauses on data center construction, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

New York lawmakers pass one-year ban on new data centers

In April, Maine Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a similar statewide moratorium on data centers.

EU Commission Vice-President Virkkunen and Commissioner Jorgensen hold press conference

EU proposes “tech sovereignty package” to bolster domestic AI and chip industries

Europe is hastening its breakup with US tech as the Trump administration’s grip on American tech companies tightens.

Jon Keegan6/3/26

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