David Wales is a Partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and is based in London. Previously the Global Chair of Antitrust Practice at Jones Day, David Wales has extensive antitrust experience in both the private and public sectors. He represents foreign and domestic clients in a wide range of industries on all aspects of antitrust, including mergers and acquisitions, criminal grand jury investigations, dominant firm conduct, distribution arrangements, licensing, and competitor collaborations. Dave has the unique experience of serving as a senior official in both U.S. antitrust agencies. He spent three years at the Federal Trade Commission and, from 2008 to 2009, oversaw all of the agency’s antitrust enforcement as acting director of the Bureau of Competition. Dave was involved with many industries at the FTC, including pharmaceuticals, health care, energy, chemicals, defense, retail, consumer products, and high-technology. Major matters handled during his tenure included Whole Foods’ acquisition of Wild Oats, CCC’s acquisition of Mitchell, lawsuits against Cephalon and Solvay Pharmaceuticals for exclusion payment agreements, and Inova’s acquisition of Prince William Hospital. From 2001 to 2003, Dave was counsel to the assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, where he was part of the team overseeing all antitrust matters before the agency, including the Microsoft case, the DIRECTV/Echostar merger, and Northrop Grumman’s acquisition of TRW. Prior to his recent government tenure, Dave was an antitrust partner with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and Shearman & Sterling. Dave has testified on antitrust policy issues before the U.S. Congress and the Antitrust Modernization Committee. He regularly speaks and writes on antitrust and has had various leadership positions in the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Section.
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The Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice released a draft of proposed new merger guidelines Wednesday, 18 months after FTC Chair Lina Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter announced plans to "modernize" the agencies’ approach to merger (...)
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a draft of proposed new merger guidelines today, 18 months after FTC Chair Lina Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter announced plans to “modernize” the agencies’ approach to (...)
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Key Points Proposed revisions to the DOJ’s and FTC’s merger guidelines would lower the threshold at which deals are considered presumptively anticompetitive, potentially increasing the number of deals regulators will challenge or subject to in-depth scrutiny. The new guidelines would support (...)
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On January 5, 2023, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking under the FTC Act with far-reaching implications for U.S. employers. If enacted and enforced, the proposed rule would prohibit employers from entering noncompete clauses with workers, and require (...)
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Last month, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division announced its first criminal attempted monopolization charges in more than 40 years. In the case, U.S. v. Zito, Nathan Nephi Zito, the owner of a Montana paving company, pleaded guilty to a violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act after (...)
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On November 18, 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted 4-0 to adopt a new policy statement outlining the commission’s plans to expand its criminal referral program in an effort to prevent and deter corporate crime stemming from consumer protection and criminal antitrust misconduct. The (...)
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Takeaways Under the Biden administration’s “whole-of-government” approach to promoting competition, a range of agencies outside the DOJ and FTC have been asked to use their authority to reform markets. Wide-ranging procedural changes at the FTC have expanded its review powers and complicated (...)
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President Biden has signaled a pro-enforcement approach to antitrust policy by naming Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu as a White House adviser and nominating Lina Khan, who also teaches at Columbia Law, to be commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Both are known for expansive (...)
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On August 31, 2020, the Delaware Chancery Court issued an opinion in litigation between Anthem and Cigna related to the contract in their terminated merger. In its sprawling 306-page opinion, the court detailed a “corporate soap opera” in which the parties’ “battle for power spanned multiple (...)
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Following their January publication of Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines (draft guidelines) for public comment, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) (collectively, the agencies) issued final Vertical Merger Guidelines (Guidelines) on June 30, 2020. This marks (...)
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Antitrust-Related Considerations Collaborations With Competitors Companies seeking to collaborate with competitors in response to the COVID-19 crisis must keep in mind, as the Department of Justice has recently cautioned, that the antitrust laws remain in effect, and agreements among (...)
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On April 12, the Federal Trade Commission held a hearing to debate the extent to which the FTC should use retrospective reviews to strengthen merger enforcement. This was the latest in the series of hearings on Competition and Consumer Privacy in the 21st Century. The hearing included remarks (...)
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The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Competition has established a task force dedicated to monitoring competition in U.S. technology markets and taking enforcement actions as warranted. While the remit of the task force largely overlaps with the FTC’s existing enforcement activities, (...)
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On February 25, 2019, in FTC v. Shire ViroPharma, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit confirmed that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cannot plead its way into federal court via Section 13(b) of the FTC Act in the absence of specific allegations that a defendant “is (...)
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The Federal Trade Commission staff have completed a new study evaluating its process for designing and implementing merger remedies and the success of the remedies it has imposed in the past. Its report—"The FTC’s Merger Remedies 2006-2012 : A Report of the Bureaus of Competition and (...)
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This article has been nominated for the 2016 Antitrust Writing Awards. Click here to learn more about the Antitrust Writing Awards. The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division will consider individual civil enforcement actions against executives implicated in corporate wrongdoing, (...)
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This article has been nominated for the 2016 Antitrust Writing Awards. Click here to learn more about the Antitrust Writing Awards. One important procedural difference between merger challenges by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission is that FTC may challenge a (...)
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission this week announced a highly unusual proposed consent agreement reached with Robert Bosch GmbH ("Bosch") that permits Bosch’s acquisition of SPX Service Solutions U.S. LLC ("SPX Service Solutions") from SPX Corporation ("SPX") to proceed. More significantly, (...)
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A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a district court decision enforcing the Federal Trade Commission’s administrative subpoena and civil investigative demand in an ongoing FTC investigation. The December 13, 2011, opinion is noteworthy (...)
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The Federal Trade Commission has filed an administrative lawsuit seeking to undo Laboratory Corporation of America’s (« LabCorp ») acquisition of Westcliff Medical Laboratories, Inc. (« Westcliff »). According to the agency’s December 1 complaint, the merger will substantially lessen (...)
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Last week, the United States federal antitrust agencies-the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission-released proposed revisions to the Horizontal Merger Guidelines. The Guidelines, which have been revised several times over the past 40 years, delineate how the (...)
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On October 7, 2009, Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney used a speech to the National Association of Attorneys General to reaffirm the DOJ’s commitment to a closer cooperation with the state enforcers. She also devoted a major portion of her remarks to offering a (...)
