The DOJ and FTC recently released their annual reports on antitrust enforcement for the 2011 fiscal year. These reports highlighted the agencies' achievements in the previous year and illustrated their ongoing goals. For more information on those goals, see Legal Updates, The DOJ Focuses on Anticompetitive Healthcare Markets and FTC Announces its Enforcement Priorities for FY 2013.

The DOJ's annual report showed a strong surge in its merger enforcement actions, which increased by ten over 2010 for a total of 16. Of those, the DOJ successfully litigated US v. H&R Block, its first merger case since 2004. Parties in two other challenged mergers abandoned their transactions, and the remaining 13 investigations resulted in settlement.

Criminal enforcement actions also significantly increased in the 2011 fiscal year. The DOJ filed 90 cases, more than any year since 1987, and, for the fifth year in a row, the DOJ obtained over $500 million in criminal fines. Before 1994, the largest corporate fine imposed for a single Sherman Act count was $6 million, but to date, there have been 91 criminal fines of $10 million or more. Additionally, the average prison sentence in 2011 was nearly 17 months, more than double the average of eight months in the 1990s, and foreign nationals faced ten-month prison sentences on average.

In its highlights of 2011 enforcement actions, the FTC noted that it redoubled its efforts to prevent hospital mergers that could leave insufficient local options for in-patient services and that many of its recent enforcement actions involved companies that provide healthcare services. The FTC also focused on preventing mergers that would allow firms to raise drug prices and challenged seven mergers involving pharmacies or pharmaceutical manufacturers. Additionally, the FTC reiterated its commitment to restricting pay-for-delay patent settlements, noting that these agreements delay the availability of low-cost generic drugs and allow branded manufacturers to continue to charge monopoly prices.