Federal Trade Commission 
Amazon formally asked the Federal Trade Commission to block recently appointed agency chair Lina Khan -- an outspoken critic of Amazon and other tech giants -- from participating in antitrust reviews involving the company because she has shown a demonstrable bias against Amazon.Amazon on Wednesday filed a motion requesting Khan's recusal with the FTC on Wednesday, as first reported by Bloomberg News. In the filing, the ecommerce company noted that Khan has made public comments about Amazon and its conduct,...
Federal Trade Commission
Lina
Khan
Chair
When Khan was picked by President Joe Biden to head the FTC in June 2021, it wasn’t seen as good news for people in the M&A world. She was already well known for a paper she wrote for the Yale Law Journal as a third-year law student in 2017 titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” It challenged the prevailing philosophy that consolidation is fine as long as it doesn’t cause prices to rise and posited that, left unchecked as it had been for decades, consolidation had the potential to stifle not just competition but the free exchange of ideas. Amazon and Facebook petitioned the FTC, asking that Khan be recused from investigations involving their companies due to her past criticisms. In spite of her strong words, the FTC allowed Amazon and CAA’s respective acquisitions of MGM and ICM Partners to proceed.
