Even though the federal institutions and even the general public seemed to be quite surprised by the unexpected delay of the CVE-Aetna merger, caused by a federal judge's order to further explore the potential antitrust issues regarding the merger, It’s quite clear that it’s going to take some time to resolve this and even the final outcome is beginning to come into question. I don’t want to start a debate on the judge's motives for not giving the |green light” to the merger in a situation where everybody thought that it would just be a routine review, but merely state the fact that the merger is not as certain as it seemed a while ago and that at this point anything can happen.
https://nypost.com/2018/12/24/judge-taking-fed-heat-on-handling-of-cvs-aetna-merger/