Washington, D.C. – The American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement in response to reports that Salesforce plans to acquire Slack for $27.7 billion.

“This merger between Salesforce and Slack, like that between book publishers Simon & Schuster and Bertelsmann, is fundamentally defensive, a result of a refusal of antitrust enforcers to enforce the law. Just as book publishers are merging to get bargaining power against monopolist Amazon, business software maker Slack is trying to find a way to defend itself from Microsoft’s underpricing and bundling of its Teams product,” said Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Slack has complained to European enforcers and told investors it fears retaliation from Microsoft, which can cut off its ability to interoperate with Microsoft software. In allowing Microsoft to engage in such unfair practices without a policy response, antitrust enforcers are encouraging mega-mergers by multi-billion-dollar companies like Salesforce and Slack, who are looking compete in a growing market. The FTC or the DOJ should stop this merger but should also investigate Microsoft for its anticompetitive behavior.”

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.  

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Economic Liberties works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.