WASHINGTON, D.C. -

This week, Federal Trade Commission chairman Joe Simons released a summary of the agency’s 2019 annual highlights, calling attention to the commission’s ongoing efforts to protect consumers and promote a competitive marketplace.

By far the largest sum included among the judgments the FCC specified in the monetary relief category stemmed from the settlement federal officials reached in July with Equifax over its data breach. The FTC portion of that development included $425 million.

The annual report also recapped FTC actions have led to more than $232 million in direct refunds to consumers across the country, with $136 million sent directly from the FTC. Over the last four years, officials tabulated that consumers have cashed more than $1 billion in FTC refund checks.

The report went on to mention the FTC continued its efforts to challenge “harmful” mergers and stop anti-competitive business conduct. For example, the commission took enforcement actions to preserve competition in health care and consumer products markets and established a new Technology Enforcement Division to investigate potential anticompetitive conduct in digital platform markets.

“We continued to advance our aggressive enforcement agenda in 2019,” Simons said in a news release. “In addition to the record-breaking privacy settlements with Facebook, and Google/YouTube, the FTC challenged a host of anticompetitive mergers and conduct, and took action to stop consumer fraud and deception in the marketplace.”

The complete report can be downloaded on this webpage.