• Bloomberg reports that Amazon has set the dates for its annual Prime Day promotion this year - June 21 and 22, "as the company tries to get its big summer sale back on schedule after postponing it last year due to the pandemic."
• Variety reports that Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) is asking the US Department of Justice to conduct "a thorough investigation" of the proposed $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM by Amazon "to ensure that this deal won’t risk harming competition."
“This is also a reminder of why we need to fund our antitrust agencies so they can take on investigations of multi-billion dollar deals,” said Klobuchar, who chairs the antitrust subcommittee. “Our government cannot ensure major corporations are playing by the rules if enforcement agencies are chronically underfunded. My bipartisan legislation, which recently passed through the Judiciary Committee, would give the antitrust agencies additional resources to conduct rigorous reviews of large mergers.”
Fast Company writes that the proposed deal reflects " the even greater monopolistic foothold that this deal gives one of the world’s richest and most powerful companies, one whose market cap is not in the billions but trillions. Now, beyond just selling its own products, like baby oils, in its own marketplace and thus edging out smaller, independent businesses, Amazon will be doing the same thing with movies and TV shows at a scale of 10 times what it’s currently been doing in entertainment. The MGM library consists of more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV episodes.
"It’s an issue that politicians on all sides of the spectrum have been railing about for years now when it comes to Big Tech, and those cries will undoubtedly grow louder in the coming weeks, potentially even affecting this deal, which rests upon regulatory approval."
