Navigating the Uncertain Climate of Vertical Merger Enforcement

Stephen Calkins
Professor, Wayne State University Law School;
Former Commissioner, Competition and Consumer Protection Commission of Ireland;
Stephen Calkins is Professor of Law at the Wayne State University Law School, where he teaches courses and seminars in antitrust and trade regulation, consumer law, and ¬torts. He has taught at the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Utrecht (The Netherlands), and served as Wayne State University’s associate provost and the Law School’s interim dean.
He is a life member of the American Law Institute, a Fellow of the European Law Institute and a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the advisory board of the American Antitrust Institute. He served three three-year terms on the Council of the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law and is a former member of the Council of the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. He is also a former chair of the Association of American Law School's Antitrust and Economic Regulation Committee. He holds degrees from Yale (B.A.) and Harvard (J.D.).

While in private practice, Calvani has worked on acquisitions/joint ventures in a very large number of industries and their review by numerous competition agencies. These would include the largest bank merger at that time, the largest telecommunications merger at that time and one of the largest petroleum company mergers. He has participated in civil and criminal investigations in many industries by both federal and state authorities. These would include some of the largest criminal cartel matters in recent history.

Dennis W. Carlton
Dennis W. Carlton is the David McDaniel Keller Professor of Economics at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago where he teaches in the Business School, Law School and Economics Department. His teaching and research centers on microeconomics, industrial organization, and antitrust. He has published more than 100 articles and two books, including one of the leading textbooks in industrial organization.
Carlton earned his PhD in Economics in 1975 from MIT, his MS in Operations Research from MIT in 1974, and his AB (summa cum laude) in 1972 from Harvard College.

A significant part of Crowther’s practice involves working within the firm’s market leading global sports law practice. He handles a wide range of sports matters including complaints and investigations relating to athlete welfare, performance development, funding, selection, classification, doping, and athlete agreements. Peter also advises on commercial agreements including in respect of tournaments, athlete boycotts and related competition issues.

Dugan has over 25 years of corporate finance, capital markets, and venture capital investment experience. Prior to forming OCA Ventures, he traded derivatives at the Chicago Board of Trade and worked in corporate finance with Continental Bank. While at Continental Bank, he participated in the structured financing of companies ranging in capital size from $10 million to several billion dollars and in the formation of a $150 million subsidiary to fund mezzanine debt and equity financings.

He received a BA in Economics from the University of Rochester and earned his MBA (MM) from the JL Kellogg Graduate School of Management. In addition to his responsibilities at OCA Ventures, Dugan is a founding member of the Illinois Venture Capital Association (IVCA), where he formerly served five years as Treasurer, Director and member of the Executive Committee and was the 2013 Fellows Medal recipient. Prior to serving as Treasurer, he was the Chairman of the Legislative Committee for the IVCA, in which capacity he helped establish HB 3212 as Illinois law.

Dugan is a frequent guest lecturer and panelist at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and Chicago Booth GSB. He is also a charter member of Tie Network Chicago and Co-Founder/Treasurer of www.SmartBet.org. In his free time, Dugan serves as a Regional Ambassador for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Foundation, and coaches travel girls lacrosse in the suburbs of Chicago.

Jamillia Ferris
Ferris also served as chief of staff and counsel to the assistant attorney general of the DOJ's Antitrust Division.

Professor Froeb served as Chief Economist at the Federal Trade Commission from 2003-2005, where he managed over a hundred civil servants dedicated to tearing down barriers to competition, and enforcing the consumer protection and antitrust laws of the United States.

There he discovered that there is a lot more to management than what he teaches in class. His mea culpa was sent out to all his former students. Also, after reading hundreds of documents submitted by merging companies to the FTC, Froeb wrote: “If Merger is the Answer, What is the Question?,” berating CEO’s for poorly documenting the reasons for merger.

For the second year in a row, Froeb was named “Outstanding Professor” of the Vanderbilt Executive MBA program, an honor that he shared with his colleague and mentor, David Scheffman. Froeb’s book, Managerial Economics: A Problem Solving Approach, will be published by Southwestern in 2007.

James F. Herbison
Jim is a proven litigator with over 20 major jury trials, bench trials, and arbitrations under his belt. With extensive experience in the field of antitrust, he is well versed in civil and criminal antitrust litigation, government antitrust investigations, corporate counseling, and the review and clearance of large-scale mergers and acquisitions.

Winston & Strawn partner Herbison is the leader of the firm’s Illinois Antitrust/Competition practice. He concentrates his practice on complex civil and criminal litigation, as well as government enforcement and investigation matters. He has particularly distinguished experience with antitrust matters—including civil and criminal antitrust litigation, government antitrust investigations, corporate counseling, and the review and clearance of large-scale mergers and acquisitions.

Herbison represents clients in civil antitrust matters ranging from price-fixing, market allocation, and merger enforcement to antitrust issues related to intellectual property. He also has represented clients in connection with criminal price-fixing, bid-rigging and gun-jumping grand juries and internal investigations, as well as various follow-on class action lawsuits. Herbison has also represented a number of industry trade associations and assisted in ensuring their compliance with the antitrust laws—in connection with both day-to-day operations and member product conferences and services, as well as counseling on antitrust issues relating to commercial transactions.

In addition to antitrust matters, Herbison has significant trial experience in the area of complex commercial disputes, securities fraud, health care, and trust and fiduciary litigation matters. He handles matters at the trial and appellate levels of state and federal courts nationwide, as well as administrative proceedings involving state and federal regulators, and various alternative dispute resolution forums.

Herbison received a B.A. in Economics and Management from Beloit College in 1998, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received a J.D. from Washington University School of Law in 2001, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as associate editor of the Washington University Law Quarterly.

Thomas N. Hubbard

A former Rhodes Scholar, Jones served in 2010-2011 as the senior economist for macroeconomics for the White House Council of Economic Advisers and earlier served in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In 2011, he was awarded the Stanley Reiter Best Paper Award for the best academic article written by a Kellogg faculty member in the prior four years. Jones is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Koberstein began his legal career in 1994 as a staff attorney with the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. During his eight years at the FTC, Nick was responsible for a number of the Commission’s vertical enforcement actions: In re TRW, Inc., No. C-3790 (F.T.C. Dec. 24, 1997); In re Lockheed Martin Corporation, No. C-3685 (F.T.C. Sept. 20, 1996); and In re Hughes Danbury Optical Sys., 121 F.T.C. 495 (1996).
He earned his J.D., cum laude, from Georgetown University and his B.A., with honor, from Michigan State University. He is admitted to the bars in Illinois and Washington, D.C.

Mark McCareins

J. Bruce McDonald
Bruce McDonald represents companies in energy, transportation, telecommunications, and other industries in antitrust government investigations and enforcement actions, merger reviews, and antitrust private litigation.
McDonald is immediate past chair of the State Bar of Texas’ Antitrust & Business Litigation Section. He previously served as chair of the ABA Antitrust Section’s Transportation & Energy Committee and chairman of the Houston Bar Association’s Antitrust Section. He has testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and speaks and writes frequently on antitrust law enforcement and policy. He taught antitrust and trade regulation as an adjunct professor at The University of Houston Law Center. He graduated from The University of Texas School of Law.

He earned his PhD in 1986 from the University of Chicago after graduating from the University of California at Los Angeles with a bachelor's degree in economics in 1981. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 1984.

Rajan Naik is senior vice president, chief strategy & innovation officer, for Motorola Solutions. He is responsible for the corporate strategy organization, chief technology office, venture capital portfolio and competitive and market intelligence.

Prior to joining Motorola Solutions, Naik was senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Advanced Micro Devices and before that was a partner in the technology/media/telecom practice at McKinsey & Company.

Naik serves on the boards of directors for CSG and Sonim Technologies.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Cornell University and a doctorate in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jeanne Pratt
Pratt has previously held management positions in the Cartels Directorate and as Special Legal Advisor to the Commissioner of Competition. Prior to joining the Competition Bureau, she was a lawyer who practiced exclusively in the area of competition law, advising clients on all aspects of Canadian competition law and related litigation.

Christine S. Wilson
Wilson previously served at the FTC as Chairman Tim Muris’ Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush Administration, and as a law clerk in the Bureau of Competition while attending Georgetown University Law Center.
Wilson graduated cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where she worked as a research assistant for Professor Steve Salop. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Florida, where she majored in political science and studied antitrust law with Professor Roger Blair.

Koren Wong-Ervin
Wong-Ervin graduated second in her class from the University of California, Hastings College of Law, where she was associate editor of the Hastings Law Review. She earned her BS degree magna cum laude in Political Science from Santa Clara University.

Wu earned his PhD from the University Of Chicago Graduate School Of Business and his BA from Stanford University.

Thomas N. Hubbard

Mark McCareins