US Files Antitrust Suit to Block Amex GBT-CWT Travel Merger

In a complaint filed Friday in federal court in New York, antitrust enforcers said American Express Global Business Travel Group Inc.’s acquisition of rival CWT Holdings would harm the market for travel management.

“If completed, this deal would extinguish fierce head-to-head competition between Amex GBT and CWT and risk higher prices, fewer choices, and less innovation, thereby threatening harm to scores of businesses crucial to the US economy,” according to the suit.

The administration of President Joe Biden has made antitrust enforcement and competition policy a central piece of its economic agenda. The case is one of its final acts to police what it believes is excessive concentration of power across the economy. Managing the lawsuit would fall to the incoming administration of Donald Trump and to Gail Slater, his pick to run the antitrust division.”