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by chirau18 hours ago |
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upvoteby SOLAR_FIELDS17 hours ago|
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Convince who? There is no such thing as antitrust anymore in the USA, it’s merely the size of the bribe required to let the merger go through now
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upvoteby bluedevil2k3 hours ago|
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States have the ability to sue to block mergers as well as the federal government. See the recent 11 state lawsuit seeking to block the WarnerMount merger.
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upvoteby xp843 hours ago|
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Just a couple of months ago, someone was still suing[1] to block Alaska Air/Hawaiian. This is a merger that already entirely went through. I would predict equal likelihood of some state lawsuit derailing a merger like this.

[1] https://viewfromthewing.com/passengers-demand-court-undo-ala...

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upvoteby delecti2 hours ago|
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There's a pretty clear difference between a lawsuit by 8 individuals, vs one filed by attorneys general representing a combined ~100m people.
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upvoteby 2 hours ago|
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upvoteby Forgeties792 hours ago|
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If it isn’t red states the current admin won’t care at all. If it’s mostly or entirely blue states, they’ll just default to siding with the merger out of spite.
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upvoteby PunchyHamster1 hours ago|
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Sure they have ability, they are just not doing it often enough
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upvoteby lotsofpulp2 hours ago|
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Which is funny because regardless of whether or not those states succeed in blocking the merger, those legacy video entertainment businesses will become irrelevant whether they are one business or two, due to the fierce competition from TikTok/Instagram/Reddit/Youtube/Whatsapp/computers/anything on the internet in general.

It's probably the most inconsequential merger, from a consumer standpoint.

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upvoteby pc862 hours ago|
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Do you have any evidence that you can just bribe your way past antitrust regulations (which are enforced by hundreds or maybe even thousands of attorneys across the political spectrum) or is this just how you feel because you don't like who is in the White House right now?
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upvoteby snark421 hours ago|
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Not anti-trust, but you can apparently bribe the FCC to get a merger through. This just came out today.

https://www.propublica.org/article/paramount-mergers-fcc-ken...

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upvoteby naet40 minutes ago|
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I was curious so to get a very rough ballpark figure. So I went to the Wikipedia List of largest mergers and acquisitions article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_ac...)

Added up all the free market enterprise section completed deals where the purchaser was indicated as US based

Obama era:

2009: 6,

2010: 1,

2011: 4,

2012: 1,

2013: 4,

2014: 5,

2015: 7,

2016: 6

Trump term 1:

2017: 4,

2018: 8,

2019: 13,

2020: 7

Biden term:

2021: 4,

2022: 4,

2023: 7,

2024: 4

Trump term 2 so far:

2025: 11*,

2026: 9*

Obama average: 4.25 / year

Biden average: 4.75 / year

Trump term 1 average: 8 / year

*Most of the last two years are indicated as still pending, so not sure if they will go through or not.

Not exactly the most scientific data gathering or study. But it does suggest that large mergers and acquisitions have generally been made more frequently under Trump.

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upvoteby mschuster9117 minutes ago|
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> Do you have any evidence that you can just bribe your way past antitrust regulations

Well... we certainly know that preemptive appeasement is a thing [1]. IMHO, this is equivalent to a bribe - a favor, just not in monetary form.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/sep/26/kimmel-controv...

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upvoteby esskay1 hours ago|
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You think they'd only have to go through antitrust in the US? These are global payment processors, and the EU loves getting involved in this kind of thing. And no they can't just ignore it if they want to keep the majority of their customers.
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upvoteby xp843 hours ago|
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Quite true. Or honestly, it's really barely about direct financial bribery anymore[1] - all the recent ones have just hinged on incredibly naïve (and easily manipulable) readings of how a merger might affect culture war / red vs blue partisanship.

For instance, CNN really doesn't matter, and was a tiny part of WB/Discovery, but of course Trump cares deeply about (hating) CNN, so all that was needed to win over Trump and guarantee his approval was for the acquirer to whisper to him that they'd do a housecleaning there. This lifehack would work for acquiring any company that happens to control any media property that hasn't established itself as a Trump cheerleader.

Note: I'm not even a Democrat today, but the pure and petty corruption on display definitely sickens me.

[1] though, back when it was, the bribes were astoundingly high ROI due to how cheap they were!

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upvoteby dlcarrier14 hours ago|
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If it's a card-not-present transaction, Visa or MasterCard is making the bulk of the commission and forcing the vendor to take on the risk of a transaction without a PIN or password.

At least the others offer the hope that maybe some customers will pay directly from a Stripe/PayPal account, without the high commission and high risk of a Visa/MasterCard network transaction.

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upvoteby ThePowerOfFuet3 hours ago|
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>If it's a card-not-present transaction, Visa or MasterCard is making the bulk of the commission and forcing the vendor to take on the risk of a transaction without a PIN or password.

3DS2 is the solution to that problem.

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upvoteby 3 hours ago|
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upvoteby chirau8 hours ago|
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Not true. Visa and Mastercard don't make the bulk of the commission. When a merchant pays a standard 2.9% + $0.30 fee on a credit card transaction the issuing bank gets roughly 1.5-2.5% for interchange, which is the bulk. The processor or acquirer gets anywhere from 0.2-0.5% and the card network gets only about 0.1-0.15.

Also, PayPal does not lower a vendor's commission. If they pay with a PayPal cash balance, PayPal still charges the merchant a premium flat rate (often 3.49%) and simply pockets the entire spread. They don't pass the savings down. And consumer's don't have a Stripe account to pay from, Stripe is probably aiming for PayPal wallets via this move.

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upvoteby sgerenser3 hours ago|
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Upvote because AFAIK this is true. Not sure why your comment was downvoted to dead just a few minutes ago.
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upvoteby pstuart17 hours ago|
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Gosh, with such efficiency of operations consumers will win because pricing of their services will be more efficient! Todays Feds will try selling that story.
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