Will the new DoJ antitrust guidelines tip the scales to favor Visa & MasterCard?

Implications: The new DoJ antitrust guidelines significantly water down monopoly, per se liability, competition and tie-in standards that have propelled government enforcement and private lawsuits by retailers in recent years against Visa, MasterCard and their issuers.  Undoubtedly, the defendants will point to new guidelines to strengthen the arguments that they have not behaved as a monopoly and that their practices not only have not harmed competition but in fact have imcreased it.  At a minimum, the new guidelines could have a asignificant impact on the settlement amount in the consolidated interchange lawsuits in New York.

Analysis: The key companies in the bankcard industry are Visa, MasterCard, their large bank issuers (Citi, BofA, Chase, et al) and American Express, which although not a defendant has to worry about interchange liability.  Recent antitrust losses have cost the industry dearly around the world and particularly in the US have forced them into radical reorganizations, management changes, marketing adjustments and pricing retrenchment.  The new guidelines suggest a softening by the DoJ that is at odds with the position it took in its case against the industry a decade ago.  If so, they should have some relevance to judges and the demands that presumably are being made by the plaintiffs in the negotiations to settle the interchange liabilities.  Will the new guidelines lower the amounts the industry will have to pay to end the interchange cases?