18 Jun 2015 Newsletters

Compass Lexecon Client Newsletter June 2015

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Last year was another exceptional year for Compass Lexecon as reflected in the matters on which we were retained, the results our clients' achieved, and the quality of the experts and staff we attracted. We continue to be hired on the biggest, most complex cases and mergers around the globe.

For example, we worked (or are working) on the most important mergers: Staples/Office Depot; AT&T/DIRECTV; Comcast/Time Warner Cable; Reynolds/Lorillard; Sysco/US Foods; and Halliburton/Baker Hughes. In antitrust litigation, we worked on the CRT Price Fixing Litigation, the Optical Disk Drive litigation, and many others. In addition, in early 2015, Compass Lexecon was named the Competition Economist Firm of the Year by Who's Who Legal which included 33 Compass Lexecon experts and five additional academic affiliates from six different countries in its Who's Who of Competition Economists and named Janusz Ordover Competition Economist of the Year. Among other awards, Compass Lexecon's Dennis Carlton was named the 2014 Economist of the Year by Global Competition Review.

Our litigation and finance practice also continued to thrive in the past year as we've served as consultants and experts for both plaintiffs and defendants for clients such as: iHeart (formerly Clear Channel) in an industry-wide rate setting proceeding for non-interactive webcasting before the Copyright Royalty Board; the Federal Housing Finance Agency in its multi-billion dollar mortgage backed securities litigations against various financial institutions; and British Petroleum in its complex litigation and settlement proceedings resulting from the Gulf oil spill. We've continued our dominant role as experts in the largest high stakes securities fraud and insider trading cases, ERISA cases, and state court proceedings in Delaware and elsewhere involving corporate governance, takeover and appraisal issues. We've also gotten increasingly involved in newer areas of litigation and investigation such as high frequency trading disputes and spoofing claims.

In the international arbitration arena, our clients won significant victories in a range of cases, including the largest settlement ever paid by Bolivia. In a survey of general counsel and private practice lawyers globally, Compass Lexecon's Pablo Spiller was named as one of the five most highly regarded experts in arbitration cases, and 13 other Compass Lexecon experts – from three continents – were listed among the top economic experts in the world. People on our team were described as "legendary," "pre-eminent for treaty disputes," "renowned," "formidably intelligent," and "perceptive, to the point and extremely well reasoned."

We also continued to add to our roster of experts. In the competition space, we added Marius Schwartz, a Professor in the Department of Economics at Georgetown University and a former FCC Chief Economist; David Dranove, the Walter McNerney Distinguished Professor at the Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University, a leading expert on healthcare matters; and Andrew Sweeting, an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland focusing on industrial organization. In the finance space, we added Hendrik Bessembinder, the A. Blaine Huntsman Chaired Presidential Professor in the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, a world-renowned market microstructure and trading expert; Michael Johannes, a Professor of Finance in the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University, an expert in complex derivatives, hedge funds and risk management; Ilya Strebulaev, a Professor in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, an expert in corporate finance, private equity and credit risk; and Dr. Andrew Roper, an expert in financial markets based in Silicon Valley.

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