Comment / STB orders antitrust-grade discovery in rail M&A: UP-NS the test case

ID 6472006 © David Lee | Dreamstime.com

In a nutshell: The Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) demand for internal merger documents, issued on its own initiative after the Department of Justice called them “critically important”, transforms this from a regulatory filing exercise into something much closer to an antitrust trial. And the opponents showed up in Washington with live alternatives, not just objections.

There is a particular kind of theater that happens when an entire industry descends on the same conference hotel to argue about its own future in ...