Briefs

The U.S. Justice Dept. wants to put the kibosh on AT&T’s proposed $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile, filing a complaint in federal court on Aug. 31 saying the deal would reduce competition and violate antitrust law. The controversial merger, first announced in March, would make Dallas-based AT&T the largest mobile carrier in the U.S., displacing current market-leader Verizon and leaving Sprint a distant third. If the deal falls apart, AT&T would have to pay T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, a break-up fee of as much as $3 billion in cash, plus some wireless infrastructure. AT&T said it will “vigorously contest” the litigation and will ask for an expedited hearing.

Online review site Yelp and the social network Facebook are retreating from the once-promising daily deal market. Yelp is cutting back its online discount coupons sales staff while Facebook will stop offering local deals entirely. Both rolled out the services to compete with Groupon, but the rapid proliferation of offerings has driven down margins. More than half of consumers who have signed up for daily deals say they are “overwhelmed” by the flood of e-mails, according to a survey by PriceGrabber, a deal aggregator.