- Adjusted base
- 2,030
- Second Requests
- 61 / 3.0%
- ET grants
- 1,107 / 73.5%
Federal HSR comparative desk
Merger Review Comparison Studio
Compare federal merger-review years using published notification counts and adjusted denominators. Policy changes and reporting gaps affect comparisons; review activity does not establish competitive harm.
- Published years
- 10
- FY2016-FY2025
- Selected
- 3
- of 4 maximum
- Monthly records
- 36
- 12 per selected year
- Evidence sources
- 1
- FTC and DOJ annual report
- Synthetic scores
- 0
- exact measures remain separate
Federal review comparison
3 fiscal years on one reporting contract
36 exact monthly cells / reviewed Aug 13, 2026Comparison set
3 / 4Fiscal-year selection
01
FY20192,089 reported transactions
02
FY20201,637 reported transactions
03
FY20213,520 reported transactions
Available fiscal years
01 / Reporting unitFederal fiscal-year HSR program activityOctober through September; one annual source release
02 / Exact alignmentSame published fields and monthly calendarCounts and rates retain their own denominators
03 / Interpretation boundaryNo agency score or competitive-harm inferenceEarly termination remains policy-sensitive
Source-separated review pipeline
Counts, denominators, and rates stay distinct
- Adjusted base
- 1,580
- Second Requests
- 48 / 3.0%
- ET grants
- 861 / 76.0%
- Adjusted base
- 3,413
- Second Requests
- 66 / 1.9%
- ET grants
- 417 / 19.6%
Published measureFY2019FY2020FY2021
Reported transactionsNotification-stage count
2,089
1,637
3,520
Filings receivedFilings are not transactions
4,142
3,249
7,002
Adjusted review universeSecond Request denominator
2,030
1,580
3,413
Second RequestsAdministrative investigation count
61
48
66
Second Request rateAdjusted transactions
3.0%
3.0%
1.9%
Early termination requestsPolicy-sensitive request count
1,507
1,133
2,124
Early termination grantsPolicy-sensitive grant count
1,107
861
417
Early termination grant rateEarly termination requests
73.5%
76.0%
19.6%
Evidence coverage ledger
Missing history remains visible
Annual HSR activityOne complete published pipeline row per fiscal year
3 / 3completeMonthly filing cadenceTwelve reported fiscal months for every selected year
3 / 3completeTransaction-size distributionTransaction-size bands are encoded only for FY2025
0 / 3partialInterpretation boundary
HSR transactions are notifications reported under the federal premerger program, not a census of every U.S. merger. A reported transaction can involve multiple filings, and the adjusted denominator removes matters for which the agencies could not issue a Second Request. Second Requests and public enforcement actions are different stages with different timing rules. Their counts must not be treated as a finding that every reviewed or reported transaction was anticompetitive. Early termination statistics reflect requests and agency action under the rules operating in each fiscal year. Policy and publication changes make this series unsuitable as a standalone measure of enforcement intensity. Fiscal-year differences are descriptive changes in published HSR program activity. They are not merger-rate estimates, agency-performance scores, findings of competitive harm, or causal effects of policy changes.