Two of the world’s largest insurance brokers, Aon and Willis Towers Watson, announced Monday that they had called off a planned $30 billion merger, just a little more than a month after the Department of Justice sued to block the union, in a victory for the White House.
The DOJ’s case against the proposed merger was the first big trustbusting move by the Biden administration, which has signaled a willingness to be tough on corporate consolidation.
This case is arguably the first antitrust win for President Joe Biden, who named Jonathan Kanter last week to run the DOJ’s antitrust division. Kanter has spent much of his career fighting Big Tech on behalf of smaller companies.
On Monday, Aon and Willis Towers Watson said they decided to end the Justice Department’s litigation and move forward independently.
“We reached an impasse with the U.S. Department of Justice,” Aon’s CEO, Greg Case, said in a statement.