Premerger notification filings provided to US states are creating friction in attorney general offices that must cope with a large influx of documents on top of normal enforcement. Colorado and Washington in mid-2025 became the first states to receive federal HSR forms from merging parties that have ties to the states. California enacted similar legislation that will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2027, while other states continue to weigh Uniform Law Commission-drafted legislation.
Premerger notification filings provided to US states are creating friction in attorney general offices that must cope with a large influx of documents on top of normal enforcement. Colorado and Washington in mid-2025 became the first states to receive federal HSR forms from merging parties that have ties to the states. California enacted similar legislation that will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2027, while other states continue to weigh Uniform Law Commission-drafted legislation.
“There's a lot more filings than we expected and it's causing a lot of friction,” Colorado First Assistant Attorney General Bryn Williams said at a conference.* “But we're committed to reading every one. We're committed to actually looking at every one.”
Williams said that Colorado, since August, has received approximately 250 HSR filings and that his shop has six attorneys, with five tied up between Live Nation/Ticketmaster and HPE-Juniper litigation, on top the challenge to Nexstar-Tegna.
“The vast majority of these mergers are not things we're interested in looking at,” Williams said. “I'm worried that it'll just make everything a little bit more difficult. And what is gained in terms of the efficiency of filling out those forms will be lost in terms of the number of deeper investigations we have to go into.”
Washington state Managing Assistant Attorney General Travis Kennedy agreed, adding that Washington has received approximately 200 HSR forms with a team of 15 attorneys.
States report that merging parties have separately increased their communication with states, but the HSR forms are not necessarily driving that.
“I think the answer to that is actually yes, but I don't think it's because of the HSR process,” Williams said. “I think it's because of other sorts of actions that states have taken to show that we are interested in, and are focused on, investigating, litigating mergers that we think are anti-competitive.”
— Federal Collaboration —
The passage of state-level reporting requirements was intended to help state enforcers to better collaborate among themselves and with federal partners, according to Williams.
Recent developments in the HPE-Juniper settlement with the US Department of Justice and the federal approval of the Nexstar-Tegna deal highlight states’ sometimes strained relationships with the federal government (see here and here).
“The motivation was really to enable and speed up that cooperation,” Williams said, “as our relationship with the federal government has frayed a little bit.
"It's not broken. It's still strong, but it is fraying.”
States are more resource-constrained without federal support.
“Everything works better, I think, when we have a strong collaborative relationship with the feds,” Williams said. “I think it adds more predictability to the process. It adds for more efficient resource allocation. It lets the states focus on a smaller subset of these kinds of transactions, or this kind of conduct. It is just a much better process when we’re collaborating.”
*American Bar Association Antitrust Spring Meeting 2026. Washington, DC. March 25-27, 2026.
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