Lina Khan’s selection as head of the US Federal Trade Commission has ushered in a new era of co-operation between regulators on both sides of the Atlantic, according to Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief.
Vestager told the Financial Times she saw “a lot of alignment” with her American colleagues on policymaking and legal enforcement, as European regulators welcome a new age of trustbusting under US President Joe Biden.
Her comments reflect a new closeness between competition regulators in the US, EU and UK as they pursue parallel cases into proposed deals by Facebook, Nvidia and Illumina. Officials in the Biden administration say such collaboration will be essential as they look to toughen America’s approach to competition law, especially in the technology sector.
The transatlantic co-operation has raised alarms in US boardrooms, however, where executives have already been highly critical of Khan, who has been credited with overhauling the Democratic…