Neil Dryden Wins Economist of the Year from Global Competition Review

Compass Lexecon Wins Multiple Awards Again

On April 5, 2016, Global Competition Review (GCR) awarded Neil Dryden, an Executive Vice President in our London office, its 2016 Economist of the Year award. Mr. Dryden was cited for his work on the BT/EE merger. In this highly contested merger, he developed models to assess vertical foreclosure theories of harm and made written and oral submissions to the UK Competition and Markets Authority. The merger was cleared unconditionally. He also worked on the merger of Ball and Rexam, in which he coordinated the European competition analysis and worked closely with Compass Lexecon colleagues advising on the US side of the deal. Mr. Dryden is, by far, the youngest winner of the Economist of the Year award and the fourth member of the Compass Lexecon team to win the award. Previous Compass Lexecon winners include: Dennis Carlton (2014), Jorge Padilla (2012), and Janusz Ordover (2011).

Compass Lexecon is also proud that we worked on a number of other matters which won awards in the following categories:

• Merger Control of the Year – Americas: Expedia/Orbitz merger. Compass Lexecon's work on the Merger of the Year in the Americas was led by Dennis Carlton, Gustavo Bamberger, Lynette Neumann, Bryan Keating, and Jon Orszag.
• Merger Control Matter of the Year – Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa: Microsoft/Nokia merger. The Compass Lexecon team working on the merger included Dennis Carlton, Mary Coleman, Allan Shampine, and Jonathan Bowater.
• Behavioural Matter of the Year – Europe: European Commission CDS investigation. The separate Compass Lexecon teams working for multiple parties included Justin Coombs, Lorenzo Coppi, Neil Dryden, Urs Haegler, Jeremiah Juts, Alison Oldale, Janusz Ordover, Jorge Padilla, Frederic Palomino, Dan Rubinfeld, David Sevy, and Andria van der Merwe.

In addition, Compass Lexecon's Dennis Carlton and Bryan Keating won the Best Academic Economics Article in Antitrust at the 2016 Antitrust Writing Awards, presented by Concurrences and George Washington University Law School. Their paper, "Rethinking Antitrust in the Presence of Transactions Costs: Coasian Implications," was published in the June 2015 Review of Industrial Organization. The paper analyzes using both theory and merger simulation how transactions costs influence the ability to charge differential pricing and how market structure and industry behavior affect those transactions costs.