Will The Dart-Solo Deal Receive Early Termination Of The Hart-Scott Waiting Period?

Mark Zuckerberg (albeit on a very different deal-type) recently received Hart-Scott early termination, on his proposal to divest part of his holdings of Facebook to the general public, via his pending public offering.

Will Dart be granted an early exit from the mandated waiting period, as well?

We shall see -- but a fair bit of that may well turn on whether other industy players write in to express views (are you watching, this, Pactiv?) about the proposed combination -- as the below exerpt from an FTC/HSR Filing Manual (a 16 page PDF file) indicates:

. . .Neither the information submitted nor the fact that a notification has been filed is made public by the agencies except as part of a legal or administrative action to which one of the agencies is a party or in other narrowly defined circumstances permitted by the Act. However, in response to inquiries from interested parties who wish to approach the agencies with their views about a transaction, the agencies may confirm which agency is handling the investigation of a publicly announced merger. The fact that a transaction is under investigation also may become apparent if the agencies interview third parties during their investigation. . . .

We won't know for a bit whether the FTC has received any such views/objections -- but by the 15^th of April, either the MSM (or we, personally -- here at the editorial staff of redsolocupfail) will have asked the FTC. Why the 15^th? Well, certainly by then Dart will have made its initial HSR filing.

So -- do stay tuned.