WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The new head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Jonathan Kanter, said on Monday the government should seek to halt proposed mergers that pose anticompetitive concerns rather than strike deals for the sale of assets or other concessions that would enable the transaction to be completed. .

“In my view, when the division concludes that a merger is likely to lessen competition or tends to create a monopoly, in most situations we should seek a simple injunction to block the transaction,” said Kanter, who has was confirmed in November and is one of three progressives appointed to top U.S. antitrust posts.

Kanter took the helm of the division at a time of rising inflation, including in key industries like meat production, and growing concern that there are a range of sectors in the economy where a handful of companies have become too powerful.

Kanter argued that asset sales, or divestitures, can fail because the company buying the assets doesn’t make full use of them. He also noted that it was often difficult to craft behavioral remedies, such as creating a firewall separating two areas of a business.

“None of this is to say that divestitures should never be an option. Sometimes business units are discrete and comprehensive enough that decoupling them from a parent company in a non-dynamic market is a straightforward exercise where divestiture can have a high degree of certainty of success,” Kanter said. “But in my opinion, these circumstances are the exception and not the rule.”

(Report by Diane Bartz)