The New York Times reported that the Federal Trade Commission was investigating potential antitrust violations at Apple and Google due to director interlocks. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and Art Levinson, the resigning CEO of Genentech, serve on both boards. That, according to the FTC, potentially runs afoul of the Clayton Act’s prohibition against individuals’ serving on two boards when such service would reduce competition between them.
Schmidt recuses himself whenever the iPhone is discussed because of his company’s involvement with Android, but that may not be a clean enough break.
Sounds like a sticky legal situation, doesn’t it?
After the jump, not only do we identify the firm that’s advising Google, but we link to their recent training deck on this very subject (and explain the picture).
Wilson Sonsini is Google’s board’s longtime counsel and All Things D somehow tracked down the slides WSGR used in an internal training session. The firm couldn’t explain why the slides had been posted to the web, but they’ve since been taken down. Fortunately, All Things D was able to get a copy from Google’s own cache and has put them up on docstoc for us all to peruse.
Chris “Straight Outta” Compton (USAFA BS ‘65, NYU JD ‘68) was the author of the deck. He’s got some serious antitrust chops:
Since joining Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Chris has overseen the antitrust regulatory work in more than 900 mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures—many of which involved formal investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, the European Commission, and other international competition agencies.
That certainly qualifies him to explain the subtleties of the Sherman Act’s little brother, as he does in the slideshow. He makes a few interesting points that will likely be relevant: once the companies clear certain revenue thresholds (which, as you can imagine, these two behemoths clearly do), there is per se liability; private parties and government agencies may bring the actions; and, most importantly for his client, treble damages are available, but no private plaintiff has ever recovered. The government can, however, get an injunction.
Even though their they’re tooting their own horn, we learn something interesting about the firm.
The firm’s record of success, including Hewlett Packard’s $18.7 billion acquisition of Compaq Computer in 2002, has been unparalleled: No Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati transaction since 1980 has ever been blocked or abandoned due to an antitrust challenge by the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission.
Sure, they could just be good at picking engagements, but that’s a pretty nice run.
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i'm shocked to hear there is gambling going on between recusals, and that possibly a "how to" monopolize tutorial may have leaked onto the streets.
as a suggestion the DOJ may want to consider upping the salaries of its antitrust attorneys (3-4xs). After that it may want to go on a recruiting campaign to lure talent. The DOJ will of course want to plop its headquarters right down in the center of Stanford University and open a booth too. only then can we make good use of the lyrics written by Freddie Mercury's bohemian rhapsody, who predicted these monopoly events, long since ~ only then will the games begin.
~~
I see a little silhouetto of a man, [delivering the same argument to the DOJ]
Scaramouche,scaramouche will you do the fandango
-
Thunderbolt and lightning-very very frightening me-
Galileo,galileo,
Galileo
galileo
Galileo figaro-magnifico-
(Freddie, was persian raised in india, lead singer of Queen 1946-1991)