Adamas Amenity Services LLC, et al.; Analysis of Agreement Containing Consent Order To Aid Public Comment

<NOTICE> FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[File No. 241 0081]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Adamas Amenity Services LLC, et al.; Analysis of Agreement Containing Consent Order To Aid Public Comment</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Trade Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed consent agreement; request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The consent agreement in this matter settles alleged violations of Federal law prohibiting unfair methods of competition. The attached Analysis of Agreement Containing Consent Order to Aid Public Comment describes both the allegations in the complaint and the terms of the consent order—embodied in the consent agreement—that would settle these allegations. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before January 22, 2026. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Interested parties may file comments online or on paper by following the instructions in the Request for Comment part of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section below. Please write: “Adamas Services; File No. 241 0081” on your comment and file your comment online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> by following the instructions on the web-based form. If you prefer to file your comment on paper, please mail your comment to the following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Mail Stop H-144 (Annex P), Washington, DC 20580. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mike Naranjo (415-848-5183), American Competition Enforcement Division, Federal Trade Commission, 90 7th Street, Suite 14-300, San Francisco, CA 94103. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Pursuant to section 6(f) of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 2.34, 16 CFR 2.34, notice is hereby given that the above-captioned consent agreement containing a consent order to cease and desist, having been filed with and accepted, subject to final approval, by the Commission, has been placed on the public record for a period of 30 days. The following Analysis of Agreement Containing Consent Order to Aid Public Comment describes the terms of the consent agreement and the allegations in the complaint. An electronic copy of the full text of the consent agreement package can be obtained from the FTC website at this web address: <E T="03">https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/commission-actions.</E> The public is invited to submit comments on this document. We strongly encourage you to submit your comments online through the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. For the Commission to consider your comment, we must receive it on or before January 22, 2026. If you prefer to file your comment on paper, write “Adamas Services; File No. 241 0081” on your comment and on the envelope, and mail your comment by overnight service to: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Mail Stop H-144 (Annex P), Washington, DC 20580. Because of the agency's heightened security screening, postal mail addressed to the Commission will be delayed. Your comment—including your name and your State—will be placed on the public record of this proceeding, including, to the extent practicable, on the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. Because your comment will be placed on the publicly accessible website at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> you are solely responsible for making sure your comment does not include any sensitive or confidential information. In particular, your comment should not include sensitive personal information, such as your or anyone else's Social Security number; date of birth; driver's license number or other State identification number, or foreign country equivalent; passport number; financial account number; or credit or debit card number. You are also solely responsible for making sure your comment does not include sensitive health information, such as medical records or other individually identifiable health information. In addition, your comment should not include any “trade secret or any commercial or financial information which . . . is privileged or confidential”—as provided by section 6(f) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 4.10(a)(2), 16 CFR 4.10(a)(2)—including competitively sensitive information such as costs, sales statistics, inventories, formulas, patterns, devices, manufacturing processes, or customer names. Comments containing material for which confidential treatment is requested must be filed in paper form, must be clearly labeled “Confidential,” and must comply with FTC Rule 4.9(c). In particular, the written request for confidential treatment that accompanies the comment must include the factual and legal basis for the request and must identify the specific portions of the comment to be withheld from the public record. <E T="03">See</E> FTC Rule 4.9(c). Your comment will be kept confidential only if the General Counsel grants your request in accordance with the law and the public interest. Once your comment has been posted on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> —as legally required by FTC Rule 4.9(b)—we cannot redact or remove your comment from that website, unless you submit a confidentiality request that meets the requirements for such treatment under FTC Rule 4.9(c), and the General Counsel grants that request. Visit the FTC website at <E T="03">https://www.ftc.gov</E> to read this document and the news release describing this matter. The FTC Act and other laws the Commission administers permit the collection of public comments to consider and use in this proceeding, as appropriate. The Commission will consider all timely and responsive public comments it receives on or before January 22, 2026. For information on the Commission's privacy policy, including routine uses permitted by the Privacy Act, see <E T="03">https://www.ftc.gov/site-information/privacy-policy.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Analysis of Agreement Containing Consent Order To Aid Public Comment</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">I. Introduction</HD> The Federal Trade Commission (“Commission”) has accepted, subject to final approval, an Agreement Containing Consent Order (“Consent Agreement”) with Adamas Amenity Services LLC, Adamas Building Services LLC, Adamas Concierge LLC, Adamas Parking Services LLC, and Adamas Security LLC (collectively, “Respondents”). The proposed Decision and Order (“Order”), included in the Consent Agreement and subject to final Commission approval, is designed to remedy the anticompetitive effects that have resulted from Respondents' use of restrictive covenants in some of their contracts with building owners and managers that limit the ability of those building owners and managers to solicit or hire Respondents' employees (“No-Hire Agreements”). The term No-Hire Agreement refers to a term in an agreement between two or more companies that restricts, imposes conditions on, or otherwise limits a company's ability to solicit, recruit, or hire another company's employees, during employment or afterwards, directly or indirectly, including by imposing a fee or damages in connection with such conduct, or that otherwise inhibits competition between companies for each other's employees' services. The Consent Agreement settles charges that Respondents have engaged in unfair methods of competition in violation of section 5 of the FTC Act, as amended, 15 U.S.C. 45 (“section 5 of the FTC Act”), by entering into No-Hire Agreements with customers. Respondents' No-Hire Agreements constitute unreasonable restraints of trade that are unlawful under section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, and are thus unfair methods of competition in violation of section 5of the FTC Act. Independent of the Sherman Act, Respondents' use of the No-Hire Agreements constitutes an unfair method of competition with a tendency or likelihood to harm competition, consumers, and employees in the building services industry, in violation of section 5 of the FTC Act. The proposed Order has been placed on the public record for 30 days in order to receive comments from interested persons. Comments received during this period will become part of the public record. After 30 days, the Commission will again review the Consent Agreement, and the comments received, and will decide whether it should withdraw from the Consent Agreement and take appropriate action or make the proposed Order final. <HD SOURCE="HD2">II. The Respondents</HD> Respondents are building services contractors headquartered in Rutherford, New Jersey that provide building maintenance, janitorial, concierge, valet, and security services. Respondent Adamas Amenity Services LLC provides services relating to residential building amenities such as pool and fitness facilities. Respondent Adamas Building Services LLC provides janitorial and maintenance services. Respondent Adamas Concierge LLC handles front desk, doorman, and lobby attendant services. Respondent Adamas Parking LLC provides parking garage and valet services. Respondent Adamas Security LLC handles unarmed security services. A substantial majority of Respondents' work relates to residential buildings. <HD SOURCE="HD2">III. The Complaint</HD> The complaint alleges that Respondents sell building services to building owners and property management companies, primarily consisting of the labor of janitors, security guards, maintenance workers, and concierge desk workers who are directly employed by Respondents. These employees perform their work predominantly in New Jersey and New York City. The complaint also alleges that Respondents and their building owner and property manager customers are direct competitors in labor markets for building services workers. These include the markets for workers to ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 15k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━