Joel R. Grosberg is a partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP and is based in the Firm’s Washington, D.C. office. He focuses his practice on defending mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures before the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, state antitrust authorities, foreign competition authorities, as well as antitrust litigation. Joel has significant experience in the high tech, chemical, health care and life sciences industries. His experience includes counseling on matters related to pricing and distribution practices and other competition related matters. Joel was ranked as a leading antitrust lawyer in The Legal 500 United States. Prior to joining McDermott Will & Emery, Joel was an attorney with the Federal Trade Commission, where he handled a full range of antitrust matters involving the computer hardware and software, semiconductor, chemical, automotive parts, plastics, toy and paper industries. Joel is admitted to practice in the state of New York and the District of Columbia.
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Proposed Merger Guidelines Outline Fundamental Change of Approach to Merger Investigation and Enforcement Mergers and acquisitions will continue to face strong headwinds at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) under new proposed Merger Guidelines released (...)
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed, for comment, significant changes to the information and documents to be submitted with premerger filings—even in transactions that do not raise significant antitrust issues. The changes proposed may not take effect and may be different when (...)
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The NSI Act replaces the system of discretionary public interest intervention in mergers by the UK government under the UK Enterprise Act and creates a new mandatory notification system operated by the Investment Security Unit (ISU), part of the UK Department for Business, Energy and (...)
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On December 21, 2021, the CMA updated its guidance on interim measures in merger investigations and the initial enforcement order template. Interim measures take three forms, which depend on the stage of the investigation and whether they are imposed on the merging parties or agreed between (...)
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IAG, owner of leading airlines in Ireland, Spain and the UK, sought to acquire Air Europa from Globalia and provided notification of the transaction to the Commission in May 2021. IAG, owner of Iberia and Vueling, is the largest airline in Spain and Air Europa is the third-largest airline in (...)
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On December 14, 2021, the Commission conditionally cleared in Phase I Veolia’s acquisition of Suez. The Commission deemed Veolia’s comprehensive commitments sufficient to assuage the Commission’s competition concerns, without the need for a Phase 2 investigation. The Commission found that (...)
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In October 2021, the European Commission imposed interim measures on Illumina and GRAIL to restore and maintain competition between the entities following Illumina’s decision to close its acquisition of GRAIL prior to the Commission completing its review of the transaction and in breach of the (...)
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On October 25, 2021, the FTC announced a return to the practice of including prior approval provisions in consent decrees for allegedly anticompetitive mergers. This means that in addition to divesting a business, the FTC is requiring companies to obtain FTC prior approval before purchasing (...)
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In May 2020, Facebook purchased Giphy, the largest provider of GIFs (a format for image files that supports both animated and static images). Giphy operates an online database and search engine that primarily allows users to search and share GIFs and can be used indirectly on third-party apps, (...)
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In a prior note we provided guidance on COVID-19’s Impact on HSR Filing Timelines. The Agencies had indicated that early termination would not be granted while FTC operated on a temporary e-filing system. Today, the Agencies have updated that guidance and as of March 30 will again grant (...)
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With COVID-19-related closures rolling in daily, you may have questions about the operating status of the federal government’s antitrust enforcement agencies. Currently, the HSR review process does not seem to be significantly impacted, although the agencies will not grant a request for early (...)
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FTC AND DOJ DRAFT VERTICAL MERGER GUIDELINES PROVIDE ADDITIONAL TRANSPARENCY TO AGENCY PRACTICE* For the first time since the Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ) published non-horizontal merger guidelines in 1984, the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued updated Vertical (...)
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FTC CHALLENGES AXON’S CONSUMMATED ACQUISITION OF BODY-WORN CAMERA COMPETITOR* The US antitrust regulators continue to challenge consummated transactions. On January 3, 2020, the FTC filed an administrative complaint against Axon Enterprise, Inc., challenging its consummated acquisition of (...)
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“[T]here is no need to opine on the proper legal standards for evaluating vertical mergers because, on appeal, neither party challenges the legal standards the district court applied.” —U.S. Circuit Judge Judith W. Rogers, United States v. AT&T Inc. Antitrust practitioners and business (...)
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Today, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim announced a series of reforms with the express goal to resolve most merger investigations within six months of filing. The reforms seek to place the burden of faster reviews not only on the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), (...)
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McDermott Will & Emery lawyers succeeded in obtaining the necessary antitrust approval for clients Seadrift Coke L.P. (Seadrift), the world’s second largest petroleum-based needle coke producer, and C/G Electrodes LLC (C/G), a U.S.-based graphite electrode producer, which have been (...)
