# HSR Early Termination Notices — FTC Merger Deal Records (`nexgensignal/us-hsr-early-termination-records`) Actor

Hart-Scott-Rodino early termination notices from the US Federal Trade Commission: transaction number, date, acquiring and acquired party, acquired entities. Newest first, back to 1999. Part of NexGen Signal — official-source data products

- **URL**: https://apify.com/nexgensignal/us-hsr-early-termination-records.md
- **Developed by:** [NexGen Signal](https://apify.com/nexgensignal) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation, News
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $33.50 / 1,000 hsr early termination records

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## HSR Early Termination Notices — FTC Merger Deal Records

**Official source. No API key. Pay per record.**

This actor gives you the US Federal Trade Commission's Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) early termination notices as structured records. When companies file a merger or acquisition under the HSR Act, they must wait before closing; when the FTC and the Department of Justice grant **early termination** of that waiting period, the FTC publishes a notice naming the acquiring party, the acquired party and the entities being acquired. Each record is one notice: the HSR transaction number, the date early termination was granted, both parties and the acquired entities, read from the FTC's own Legal Library.

On 27 September 2026 the FTC's list held **28,134 rows**, from January 1999 to 21 September 2026. Early termination grants were suspended in February 2021 — the list holds only 10 notices from March 2021 to the end of 2024 — and resumed in 2025, with 381 notices that year and 26–62 a month delivered by this actor in 2026.

Use it three ways:

- **Deal flow feed.** Run it weekly with `lastDays: 7` to get newly cleared deals — often before closing is announced.
- **Company or sponsor history.** `search: "Blackstone"` or `partyContains` returns every notice naming that party, back to 1999.
- **Research datasets.** Date ranges give you clean deal panels for M\&A, private-equity and antitrust research.

### Who buys this and for what job

- **M\&A advisers, bankers and deal-sourcing teams** tracking which acquisitions have just cleared US antitrust review, and which sponsors are most active.
- **Private-equity and credit investors** watching competitors' add-on acquisitions and new platform deals.
- **Merger-arbitrage and event-driven funds** that need the clearance date for a pending deal from the source.
- **Antitrust lawyers, economists and academics** building HSR clearance datasets.
- **Business journalists and newsletters** covering deals.

### Sample output

![Sample output — HSR Early Termination Notices](https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/IXCaMKjxSmUTLHhmq/records/us-hsr-early-termination-records.png)

```json
{
  "record_id": "HSR-ET:20262188",
  "transaction_number": "20262188",
  "early_termination_date": "2026-09-21",
  "acquiring_party": "Providence Equity Partners IX-A S.C.Sp.",
  "acquired_party": "CheckedUp Investors, LLC",
  "acquired_entities": ["CheckedUp Intermediate, LLC"],
  "acquired_entities_withheld": 0,
  "notice_url": "https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/early-termination-notices/20262188",
  "source": "US Federal Trade Commission — Early Termination Notices under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, FTC Legal Library (https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/early-termination-notices)",
  "licence": "US Government work in the public domain — the FTC's data catalogue lists the HSR Early Termination Notices with the licence http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/.",
  "attribution": "Source: US Federal Trade Commission, HSR Early Termination Notices; reformatted by NexGen Signal.",
  "observed_at": "2026-09-27T16:39:33Z"
}
```

### Pricing

| Apify plan | Price per record |
|---|---|
| Free | $0.05 |
| Bronze | $0.045 |
| Silver | $0.04 |
| Gold and above | $0.0335 |

You pay only for records delivered to your dataset. `maxRecords` caps what a run can cost: 500 records cost $25 on the Free plan. Notices withheld under the privacy rule below are never charged.

### Input

| Field | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| `lastDays` | Only notices granted in the last N days | not set |
| `fromDate`, `toDate` | Only notices dated between two days (YYYY-MM-DD) | not set |
| `search` | Words passed to the FTC's own search on the list, e.g. `Pfizer`, `Blackstone` | none |
| `partyContains` | Keep only notices where a party or acquired entity contains this text (not case-sensitive) | none |
| `maxRecords` | Maximum records delivered and billed; newest notices come first | 10 |

**Default changed on 30 Sep 2026:** if you leave `maxRecords` out, a run now returns up to **10** records (it was 500). Set `maxRecords` yourself to get more — the maximum is unchanged.

Example — this week's cleared deals:

```json
{"lastDays": 7, "maxRecords": 500}
```

Example — one company's full HSR early termination history:

```json
{"search": "Pfizer", "maxRecords": 200}
```

(On 27 September 2026 that returned 28 notices, from Pfizer's acquisition of Metsera, Inc. on 31 October 2025 back to 1999; 4 more were withheld because a party may be a natural person.)

### Output

| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `record_id` | `HSR-ET:<transaction number>` — unique per notice |
| `transaction_number` | The HSR transaction number (the year is its first four digits) |
| `early_termination_date` | Date early termination was granted, as the FTC lists it |
| `acquiring_party` | The acquiring person — the ultimate parent entity — as the FTC names it |
| `acquired_party` | The acquired person — often the seller's or target's ultimate parent |
| `acquired_entities` | The entities or assets being acquired, as the FTC lists them |
| `acquired_entities_withheld` | How many acquired-entity entries were withheld as possible natural persons |
| `notice_url` | The notice page on ftc.gov |
| `source`, `licence`, `attribution`, `observed_at` | Provenance on every record |

Names are the FTC's, as published, spaces trimmed. Nothing is renamed, matched or merged.

### Cost guidance

A `lastDays: 7` run on 27 September 2026 delivered 18 records ($0.60 on Gold). At the 2026 pace a year of notices is about 570 records (about $19 on Gold). One company's history is usually a few to a few dozen records. The full archive is roughly 20,000 records after the privacy rule (about $670 on Gold) and takes about two hours or more to read, because the FTC asks crawlers to wait 5 seconds between pages.

### How a run works

The actor reads the FTC's robots.txt first and follows it exactly, including its wildcard rules and its **Crawl-delay of 5 seconds**. The FTC's robots.txt disallows the list's `items_per_page` option, so the actor never uses it and reads the default pages of 20 notices. A 500-record run took about 3½ minutes in testing; smaller searches and short date ranges took 8–80 seconds.

Paging through the whole unfiltered list is not stable — in testing it repeated 1–3 notices in the first 35 pages, which means others were skipped. So large reads go month by month: each calendar month is read in full and checked against the count the FTC reports for that month, with one re-read if anything is missing. Every complete read in testing matched the FTC's count (for example 284 of 284 notices for June–September 2026, 183 of 183 for January–March 2019). Result sets of up to 400 notices are read straight through and checked the same way. The run receipt (`RUN_RECEIPT`) records the robots decision, pages read, notices seen and withheld, and any window that stayed short with its counts.

Records are pushed to your dataset first and charged only after they are delivered; if you set a maximum charge, the run stops cleanly when it is reached. If the FTC's site cannot be reached after several retries, the run ends with a clear message and nothing is charged.

### Honest limitations

- **Privacy rule: notices naming a possible person are withheld.** The FTC names the ultimate parent of each side, and that is sometimes an individual. A notice is delivered only when both the acquiring and the acquired party carry a legal-form or organisation word (Inc., LLC, L.P., plc, GmbH, Holdings, Fund, Partners and similar). In testing this withheld about 28% of notices — including some genuine companies whose names carry no such word (for example "Johnson & Johnson" or "ConocoPhillips") and trusts named only "… Trust". Acquired-entity entries that fail the same test are withheld and counted.
- **Early terminations only.** Deals that waited out the full HSR period, were challenged or were abandoned never appear here; the FTC does not publish HSR filings themselves.
- **No deal values or terms.** The notice gives parties and entities only.
- **The 2021–2024 gap is the FTC's.** Early termination was suspended from February 2021 until 2025.
- **Party names are as filed.** Spellings vary across years (for example "Pfizer Inc." and "Pfizer, Inc."), and a few older rows carry typos.
- **A few empty placeholder rows** in the FTC's list have no transaction number or date; they are skipped and counted in the receipt.

### Licence and attribution

The FTC's data catalogue lists the HSR Early Termination Notices with the US public-domain label (http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/); they are a US Government work. Every record carries the credit *Source: US Federal Trade Commission, HSR Early Termination Notices; reformatted by NexGen Signal.* This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the FTC.

### Differentiation

Deal-signal actors on the Store, such as signalbase/signalbase-acquisitions, collect acquisition announcements from news and press releases, and jungle\_synthesizer/ec-merger-decisions-scraper covers EU merger decisions. This actor reads the US antitrust agency's own clearance record: the HSR transaction number and the date the government let the deal proceed, back to 1999, from a public-domain source.

### The NexGen Signal family

Part of NexGen Signal — official-source data products, no API keys, pay per record. Related actors:

- [Funding Round Intelligence API — SEC Form D, TechCrunch & YC](https://apify.com/nexgensignal/funding-round-intelligence-api)
- [Domain to Legal Entity & LEI — GLEIF Company Identity Lookup](https://apify.com/nexgensignal/company-data-enrichment-api)
- [US Business Entity Search & Status Check — 7 States](https://apify.com/nexgensignal/us-business-entity-status-check)
- [Federal Rulemaking Records — US Federal Register](https://apify.com/nexgensignal/federal-rulemaking-records)
- [Press Release Monitor API — PR Newswire](https://apify.com/nexgensignal/press-release-monitor-api)

# Actor input Schema

## `lastDays` (type: `integer`):

Only notices granted in the last N days. Leave empty for no limit.

## `fromDate` (type: `string`):

Optional. Only notices dated on or after this day (YYYY-MM-DD). The FTC's list goes back to January 1999.

## `toDate` (type: `string`):

Optional. Only notices dated on or before this day (YYYY-MM-DD).

## `search` (type: `string`):

Optional. Passed to the FTC's own search on the list, e.g. Pfizer or Blackstone.

## `partyContains` (type: `string`):

Optional. Keep only notices where the acquiring party, acquired party or an acquired entity contains this text (not case-sensitive).

## `maxRecords` (type: `integer`):

Maximum records delivered and billed in this run. Newest notices come first. The FTC asks crawlers to wait 5 seconds between pages of 20, so 1,000 notices take about 5 minutes.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "maxRecords": 10
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

The delivered records.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "maxRecords": 10
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("nexgensignal/us-hsr-early-termination-records").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "maxRecords": 10 }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("nexgensignal/us-hsr-early-termination-records").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "maxRecords": 10
}' |
apify call nexgensignal/us-hsr-early-termination-records --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,nexgensignal/us-hsr-early-termination-records"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/A2Y8FbFfnjAVSuwAf/builds/92SdFNDg8UWs3avT6/openapi.json