Four Lessons from the Whole Foods Case

One of the most maligned antitrust decisions in history involved a merger of grocery store chains. Indeed, even those voices inclined toward substantial antitrust intervention believe the U.S. Supreme Court erred in its 1966 Von\u27s Grocery decision, which condemned the merger of the third- and sixth-largest grocery store chains in Los Angeles. For example, the president of the reliably interventionist American Antitrust Institute conceded that the Supreme Court probably went too far and acknowledged that if Von\u27s Grocery had remained the rule, all of our industries would be highly fragmented and consumers would have lost out on many cost-cutting efficiencies. The fact is, grocery retailing involves huge scale economies and low barriers to entry - a combination that renders most consolidations beneficial to consumers. Despite the apparent consensus on Von\u27s Grocery, federal antitrust regulators seem determined to repeat its mistakes. Last summer, the Federal Trade Commission shocked the business community by seeking to block the merger of two highend grocery chains, Whole Foods Markets and Wild Oats Markets. Fortunately for consumers, cooler heads prevailed - the federal court hearing the FTC\u27s merger challenge rejected the agency\u27s motion for preliminary injunction. But while things turned out all right this time, the incident reveals a number of deficiencies in the merger review process. This article describes the Whole Foods debacle and catalogues four lessons regulators and courts should draw from the incident