Ron Lazebnik was quoted in Amherst Wire about Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods as a possible antitrust law violation.
The deal between Whole Foods and Amazon became official in August. The first order of business? Cut prices at the high-end grocery store by 43 percent, sending a huge shockwave throughout the $800 billion supermarket industry, and to competitors like Walmart and Costco. Many investors and consumers alike are thinking the same thing: Has Amazon finally violated an anti-trust law and seized control of too much of the retail market?
“The way you look at anti-trust violations is you worry about if a single company owns such a large percentage of the market or has such a large influence over a particular market that they kind of control things,” said Ron Lazebnik, an associate clinical professor at Fordham University School of Law. “It’s certainly possible that as Amazon grows, they gain a large enough percentage of the food supplying market such that they might be in a position where they have monopolistic behavior they have to be careful of.”