Pinwan, October 14, according to a survey by the Wall Street Journal , the top regulator of the US business community is also the home base of the most active investors in Washington. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the antitrust agency of the United States. It has surveyed nearly every major industry in recent years. It has launched antitrust investigations into tech companies, scrutinized credit card companies and moved to restrict mergers of drug, energy and defense companies.
But at the same time, a Wall Street Journal survey of the financial disclosures of 50 U.S. federal agencies from 2016 to 2021 showed that senior FTC officials disclosed, on average, more stock, bond and fund trades than officials at any other major agency.
Also, many of the investments of FTC officials have conflicts of interest with their work. According to the transactions disclosed by the FTC, one-third of the commission’s 90 senior officials own or trade stock in companies that are under FTC merger review or investigation. During the review period, the FTC filed lawsuits against about 60 large companies, 22 of which were held by its officials. These officials spend the most money in tech, an industry that has come under increasing scrutiny from the agency. Nearly a quarter of top FTC officials own or trade individual stocks in tech companies including Amazon, Facebook parent Meta, Google, Microsoft and Oracle, the survey showed.
For example, one chairman of the FTC owned shares in Microsoft, Oracle and AT&T, and the agency was conducting sensitive scrutiny affecting the tech and telecom industries at the time. The head of the FTC’s international division bought and sold Facebook shares through a financial advisor while his office was coordinating with law enforcement officials overseas over an investigation involving Facebook. A consumer protection official held shares in more than 10 companies as the FTC reviewed mergers and acquisitions involving those companies.
An FTC spokesman said agency officials complied with the law. The spokesman said the agency has a “robust ethics process” and adheres to the rules set by Congress and the Office of Government Ethics. He said its ethics office reviews disclosures by senior employees and advises them on how to comply with the rules.
media coverage
CNBeta IT Home Product Play
event tracking
- 2022-10-14 Investigation: Majority of U.S. antitrust agency FTC officials invested in stocks of companies it reviewed
- 2022-10-08FTC rarely continues to block Meta from acquiring VR software maker Within Unlimited
- 2022-08-24 FTC raid sues Meta over acquisition of Within
- 2022-05-31FTC files antitrust probe into Amazon’s acquisition of MGM Studios
- 2022-01-20FTC Chairman: In the face of intimidation by tech giants, antitrust will never back down
This article is reprinted from: https://readhub.cn/topic/8k68r8LIxGB
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.