News of a federal judge approving amendments sought by 16 states to Live Nation’s settlement with the Justice Department didn’t tell the full story.

In a wide-ranging, hour-long telephone interview from Paris where he was attending the OECD Global Forum on Competition, Makan Delrahim pulled no punches.

Federal Trade Commission chairmen try for unanimity on big cases and policy statements. But the agency’s partisan divide on new vertical merger guidelines is symptomatic of the broader ideological division on antitrust issues.

Veteran practitioners were surprised by news of the Federal Trade Commission securing monetary relief against personal finance website LendEDU, which engaged in a pay-to-play scheme.