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    Albertsons Backs Out of Merger Deal and Sues Kroger After Court Rulings

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    The supermarket chain had tried to join forces with Kroger, but judges sided with federal and state regulators who charged that the merger would reduce competition.The grocery chain Albertsons said on Wednesday that it had backed out of its $25 billion merger with Kroger and sued its rival for failing to adequately push for regulatory approval, after both a federal and state judge blocked the deal on Tuesday.The deal, which would have been the biggest grocery store merger in U.S. history, faced three separate legal challenges — one filed by the Federal Trade Commission — over concerns that the combined company would reduce competition and raise prices. Judge Adrienne Nelson of U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon temporarily halted the deal on Tuesday, siding with federal regulators who have argued that the merger would lessen competition at the expense of consumers and workers.Another decision blocking the merger in Washington State court, issued by Judge Marshall Ferguson just one hour later, added to the hurdles facing the companies.“Given the recent federal and state court decisions to block our proposed merger with Kroger, we have made the difficult decision to terminate the merger agreement,” Vivek Sankaran, chief executive of Albertsons, said in a statement. “We are deeply disappointed in the courts’ decisions.”On Wednesday, Albertsons also said it filed a lawsuit against Kroger in the Delaware Court of Chancery, seeking billions of dollars in damages and accusing Kroger of failing to exercise “best efforts” to secure regulatory approval. Kroger refused to divest assets necessary for antitrust approval, ignored regulators’ feedback and rejected strong buyers of stores it had planned to divest, Albertsons said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.Erin Rolfes, a spokeswoman for Kroger, disputed Albertsons’s claims, calling them “without merit.” Albertsons breached the merger agreement multiple times, she said in a statement, and the company filed the lawsuit in an attempt to deflect responsibility and seek payment for the merger’s termination fee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How FTC Chair Lina Khan Became an Election Hot Topic

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      The Federal Trade Commission chair drew increasing political vitriol as the presidential vote neared. Her political future hangs in the balance.In the run-up to the election, Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, was called a dope, partisan and unhelpful by Democrats and Republicans. Democratic donors including the billionaires Reid Hoffman, Barry Diller and Mark Cuban called for her ouster from the agency. Last week, a report from the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee accused her of having a far-left agenda and weaponizing the agency.Ms. Khan “will be fired soon,” Elon Musk, the owner of X and a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, wrote on his platform on Thursday.Few government officials elicited such intense bipartisan attention ahead of the election, making speculation regarding the future of Ms. Khan — nominated in 2021 by President Biden — one of the most avid parlor games in Washington.The fixation on Ms. Khan, 35, is uncommon for a leader at the long-under-the-radar F.T.C., which regulates companies that subvert competition and deceive consumers. It reflects the high stakes of the Biden administration’s wide-ranging program to dampen the power of America’s biggest corporations — which either presidential candidate could reverse if victorious.Scrutiny from the F.T.C. and the Justice Department has led to the collapse of billions of dollars in recent corporate deals. Lawsuits filed by the agencies could break up big American brands like Google, Amazon and the parent company of Ticketmaster. Ms. Khan has argued to regulate artificial intelligence, ordered companies to make it easier to cancel online subscriptions and banned noncompete agreements, which stop workers from taking a job with a rival employer.The backlash from the business world and its Washington allies has been fierce — and it ramped up before the vote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Texas Man Drops Suit Against Women Who Helped Ex-Wife Get Abortion Pills

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      The suit had accused the three women of wrongful death. It was part of a heated battle over the use of such pills in states with abortion bans.A Texas man has dropped his lawsuit against three women who helped his ex-wife obtain abortion pills, a case widely seen as designed to discourage private citizens from aiding women in using the pills in states where abortion is all but banned.The move on Thursday by the plaintiff, Marcus Silva, was part of a settlement with the defendants, Jackie Noyola, Amy Carpenter and Aracely Garcia. The exact details of the settlement were not made public, but they did not involve any financial terms, according to lawyers for both sides. Ms. Noyola and Ms. Carpenter also dropped counterclaims they had filed.Mr. Silva filed his suit shortly after the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and one year after Texas essentially banned most abortions with a law that also deputized private individuals to sue anyone who “aids or abets” a woman seeking an abortion.One of Mr. Silva’s lawyers is Jonathan Mitchell, a former solicitor general of Texas. The architect of the state abortion ban, he is considered a pioneer in using private lawsuits to deter the procedure. Abortion rights groups accuse him of filing the suits to attract publicity and intimidate people.Elizabeth Myers, a lawyer for Ms. Noyola and Ms. Carpenter, said the fact that Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Silva did not want to move forward with the case was “very telling.”“They live on the creation of fear,” she said. “They need the fear to ultimately lead to something real and it didn’t.” We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can Lina Khan Hold On?

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      Ms. Khan’s term as the chair of the Federal Trade Commission ended Wednesday. In a wide-ranging interview, she discussed her aggressive approach to antitrust and its critics.From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, everyone wants to know what’s next for Lina Khan.On Wednesday, the youngest-ever chair of the Federal Trade Commission reached the end of her three-year term, during which she helped to overhaul the government’s approach to antitrust enforcement and brought a slew of lawsuits against major corporations.Ms. Khan, 35, can remain in her seat indefinitely, unless she is replaced. There are factions rooting loudly for each of those outcomes.Under her leadership, the F.T.C. has brought antitrust cases against the tech giants Meta, Amazon and Microsoft, sometimes employing ambitious legal arguments. The agency has tried to ban almost all noncompete clauses and blocked Lockheed Martin and Nvidia from making multibillion-dollar deals.A powerful bipartisan cohort believes the F.T.C. chair is stretching the scope of antitrust law past its legitimate limits, rashly working to redefine the bounds of key concepts such as monopolization.Ms. Khan, her staff and her allies essentially contend the opposite: that her leadership is restoring the role of robust, active antitrust enforcement in a legal and economic system that for too long has let those regulatory muscles atrophy to the detriment of consumers and healthier market competition. Consumer watchdogs and some conservatives have cheered on Ms. Khan, defending her populist moves, like the agency’s recent warning to makers of inhalers that their aggressive use of patent loopholes may violate federal law.Some Democratic donors connected to finance and tech, however, have publicly campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris to remove Ms. Khan as chair of the F.T.C., if she wins the presidential election in November. Her campaign declined to comment on whether she would support Ms. Khan’s staying in the position.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Google, Microsoft and Amazon Shy Away From Buying A.I. Start-Ups

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      Google, Microsoft and Amazon have made deals with A.I. start-ups for their technology and top employees, but have shied from owning the firms. Here’s why.In 2022, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas left their jobs developing artificial intelligence at Google. They said the tech giant moved too slowly. So they created Character.AI, a chatbot start-up, and raised nearly $200 million.Last week, Mr. Shazeer and Mr. De Freitas announced that they were returning to Google. They had struck a deal to rejoin its A.I. research arm, along with roughly 20 percent of Character.AI’s employees, and provide their start-up’s technology, they said.But even though Google was getting all that, it was not buying Character.AI.Instead, Google agreed to pay $3 billion to license the technology, two people with knowledge of the deal said. About $2.5 billion of that sum will then be used to buy out Character.AI’s shareholders, including Mr. Shazeer, who owns 30 percent to 40 percent of the company and stands to net $750 million to $1 billion, the people said. What remains of Character.AI will continue operating without its founders and investors.The deal was one of several unusual transactions that have recently emerged in Silicon Valley. While big tech companies typically buy start-ups outright, they have turned to a more complicated deal structure for young A.I. companies. It involves licensing the technology and hiring the top employees — effectively swallowing the start-up and its main assets — without becoming the owner of the firm.These transactions are being driven by the big tech companies’ desire to sidestep regulatory scrutiny while trying to get ahead in A.I., said three people who have been involved in such agreements. Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft are under a magnifying glass from agencies like the Federal Trade Commission over whether they are squashing competition, including by buying start-ups.“Large tech firms may clearly be trying to avoid regulatory scrutiny by not directly acquiring the targeted firms,” said Justin Johnson, a business economist who focuses on antitrust at Cornell University. But “these deals do indeed start to look a lot like regular acquisitions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Claim Your Part of a $5.6 Million Ring Settlement

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      The Federal Trade Commission is sending payments to customers who had certain Ring home security cameras and accounts during a particular time period, the agency said.The Federal Trade Commission said this week that some people who had bought certain home security cameras made by Ring, which is owned by Amazon, would be eligible for refunds for their purchase. The payments, totaling more than $5.6 million, are part of a settlement between Ring and the F.T.C. over claims that the company failed to protect customer accounts.Here’s what to know.What is the lawsuit about?The F.T.C. sued Ring last May, accusing the company of giving employees and contractors access to customers’ private video footage. The agency said in its complaint that Ring had used the videos to train computer algorithms without first getting customers’ consent. Ring also failed to have proper protections, which made customer accounts, videos and cameras more vulnerable to hacking, the F.T.C. said.The F.T.C. and Ring reached a settlement that month. As part of the agreement, Ring paid a settlement that would be used for customer refunds, deleted all private videos that it shouldn’t have access to, and established a privacy and security program. The F.T.C. is now using the money Ring paid to send 117,044 PayPal payments to affected customers.Ring did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in a statement after the settlement, Ring said that it addressed issues about its security and privacy practices “well before” the F.T.C.’s lawsuit, and that the agency “mischaracterizes our security practices and ignores the many protections we have in place for our customers.”How do I find out if I am eligible for the refund?If you had a Ring account and certain types of Ring devices, such as the indoor camera models Stick Up Cam and Indoor Cam, before Feb. 1, 2018, you are eligible for a refund, according to a court order.The defendant — in this case, Ring — is typically required to provide a list of customers, their contact information and how much they paid. The F.T.C. will use the information to send payments.Eligible customers should have already received an email from the F.T.C.How much will I receive?Your payment depends on the type of Ring device you owned and the time you had your account.I got a PayPal payment from the F.T.C. How do I know if it is real?If you are eligible for a refund, you should have received an email from the agency (from the address subscribe@subscribe.ftc.gov) before Tuesday. Since payments were issued on Tuesday, you should have received another email from PayPal about the refund. You have to redeem the payment by May 22, or it will be returned to the F.T.C.If you would like the F.T.C. to send you a check instead, or have any other questions about the payment, you can speak with the refund administrator, Rust Consulting, by calling 1-833-637-4884. You can also email your request to info@ring.com. More

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      The F.T.C. Boosts Biden’s Fight Against Inflation

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      The regulator’s move to block Kroger’s $25 billion bid for Albertsons could win the president points with voters squeezed by rising prices.Kroger’s “low prices” promise has come under fire after the F.T.C. and a number of states sued to block the supermarket giant’s $25 billion bid to buy Albertsons.Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressKroger, Albertsons and the politics of inflation A paradox at the heart of the U.S. economy is that consumers are feeling squeezed even as growth indicators look strong — and are taking it out on President Biden’s approval ratings.So the White House probably cheered a move by the F.T.C. and several states on Monday to block Kroger’s $25 billion bid to buy Albertsons, arguing that the biggest supermarket merger in U.S. history would raise prices and hit union workers’ bargaining power.The Biden administration has little influence over inflation, but it’s still getting heat. Consumers are spending the highest proportion of their income on food in 30 years, and an internal White House analysis found that grocery prices had the biggest impact on consumer sentiment.The Fed has jacked up interest rates to a 20-year-high in an effort to cool inflation, but progress on that has slowed in recent months.Biden is blaming big business. In a video released on Super Bowl Sunday, he went after “shrinkflation,” lashing out at companies for reducing packaging sizes and food portions without cutting prices. Biden is expected to reiterate that view in his State of the Union address next month.The president could point to the F.T.C.’s tough approach to M.&A. The agency operates independently, but Lina Khan, the F.T.C.’s chair, has taken the most aggressive and expansive antitrust enforcement stance in decades. That may help Biden’s message with voters that he’s fighting for their interests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      F.T.C. Warns Dozens of Funeral Homes to Provide Accurate Costs to Callers

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      The agency said an “undercover phone sweep” of more than 250 homes found that 38 failed to provide prices or supplied inconsistent prices in separate calls.The Federal Trade Commission said its first “undercover phone sweep” of funeral homes across the country had found that dozens didn’t accurately disclose costs for services to callers.Of the more than 250 funeral businesses F.T.C. employees called, 38 either didn’t answer questions about prices or supplied inconsistent prices for identical services, the commission said. Many homes, it said, provided “materially different” prices for the same services during two separate phone calls.Another home promised to send an itemized price list, the agency said, but instead sent a list of package prices, which don’t meet disclosure requirements.The 39 funeral homes received warning letters in January that they had failed to comply with a law known as the Funeral Rule. The F.T.C. enforces the rule, which outlines protections for consumers shopping for funeral services.“It’s very important that consumers are able to comparison shop,” said Melissa Dickey, an F.T.C. lawyer and a co-coordinator of the Funeral Rule. “Not everyone can go in person to pick up a price list.”Of the funeral home that sent a list of package options, Ms. Dickey said: “You don’t have to buy a package.” The funeral home must let you buy only the services you want.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More