Lina Khan’s FTC tenure ends; Andrew Ferguson named chairman

Andrew Ferguson, one of the two Republican FTC commissioners appointed by US President Joe Biden, will be the next chairman of the FTC, President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday on social media.

These stories are freely received in other circles. Current FTC chairwoman Lina Khan is blamed by many in Silicon Valley for the decline in M&A activity, with critics citing antitrust charges against the agency that brought Big Tech companies under her leadership, starting in June, 2021.

Khan, who expired in September but remains involved, sat down with TechCrunch last June, where he spoke to some of those critics, saying: “[If] you’re a start-up or a founder who’s looking to make a profit as a way out, I would think that a world where there are six or seven or eight potential people is a better world than one where you only have one or two.”

Ferguson, a former Congressional aide and Supreme Court clerk, will be the “first, most pro-innovation FTC Chairman in America in our country’s history,” Trump wrote on Tuesday.