Our merger review got stuck on a single email for three months

We were buying a small parts supplier in Ohio, and the deal was basically done. Then their lawyer found one old email from a junior sales guy, sent five years ago, that could maybe be read as a price fixing hint. The FTC review, which should have taken six weeks, stretched to almost four months while they picked that one sentence apart. We had to hire a separate linguistics expert just to argue about the word 'understand'. It cost us over $80,000 in extra legal fees and nearly killed the whole transaction. Has anyone else had a deal derailed by a tiny piece of ancient communication?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_claire24d agoMost Upvoted

That Ohio email probably saved you from a much bigger FTC fine later.

richard_wells5923d ago

Saved from a bigger fine? That feels like a stretch. It was just one email from some state office, not a federal warning. The FTC has bigger fish to fry than going after someone over a small mistake. People get these letters all the time and nothing comes of it. I doubt it was that serious.

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