DOJ Looking For Cheap Stock

Why not probe the banks you idiots !

By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO and JUSTIN SCHECK

The Justice Department is investigating whether a number of large U.S. companies violated antitrust laws by establishing agreements not to recruit each other’s employees, according to people briefed on the investigation.

The department has sought information from companies in the technology and biotech sectors, including Google Inc., Apple Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Genentech Inc., these people said. It is unclear which of the companies might be targets of the probe.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

A spokesman for Google and one for Genentech each said his company had been contacted about the probe and is cooperating. “Our understanding is that a number of companies received this request for information from the U.S. Department of Justice,” the Genentech spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for Yahoo declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Apple.

The inquiry, reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday evening, is the latest sign that the Obama administration is acting on its promise to enforce antitrust laws more aggressively. And it is further evidence that the administration intends to keep tech companies, in particular, in its sights.

The Justice Department continues to investigate whether Google’s proposed settlement with authors and publishers to resolve a copyright dispute over its book-search service violates antitrust laws, according to people familiar with the matter. And the Federal Trade Commission has inquired into whether the fact that two directors — Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and former Genentech CEO Art Levinson — sit on both the Apple and Google boards violates antitrust laws.

According to one person familiar with the latest investigation, businesses frequently agree, as part of business deals or merger agreements, not to poach each other’s employees. But the Justice Department is looking into whether companies have established blanket agreements to refrain from poaching, which may be considered collusion, this person said.

David Balto, a former FTC policy director, said the underlying issue is whether agreements between companies affect the ability of employees to change jobs and negotiate for higher wages. The companies may impose such agreements, he said, in part to prevent trade secrets from being transferred to competitors. “Here’s the key thing — is there a legitimate reason for these restrictions?” Mr. Balto said.

It’s common for tech companies to hire staff from competitors. Over the past year, Microsoft, for example, has hired numerous senior managers from Yahoo to work on Microsoft’s Internet efforts.

But sometimes such hiring leads to court battles. Last month, International Business Machines Corp. sued an executive for accepting a mergers-and-acquisitions post at Dell Inc. And a California judge this week limited the duties that a former EMC Corp. executive can perform at Hewlett-Packard Co., which he recently joined.
—Don Clark and Nick Wingfield contributed to this article.