Professional notice
Global heads | Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Loren Smith |
---|---|
Home jurisdiction | US |
Countries with competition specialists | 10 |
Continents with competition specialists | 3 |
Total number of economists | 401 |
Competition economists | 239 |
Percentage of firm specialised | 59% |
Who’s Who Legal: Competition nominees | 13 |
Group one | N/A |
Group two | N/A |
Group three | N/A |
Group four | N/A |
Lateral hires | 2 |
Departures | 1 |
Internal promotions | 2 |
With 239 specialised economists in 10 offices on four continents, Brattle Group boasts a truly substantial global competition practice. Co-chairs Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Loren Smith steer the group out of the consultancy’s respective offices in New York and Washington, DC.
The consultancy’s workload appears to be ever expanding. From May 2021 to June 2022, Brattle worked on 38 merger reviews and 23 antitrust investigations, while the total number of its competition assignments increased by 71% during the same window, according to the firm.
Brattle has expanded in key jurisdictions to cope with this demand, including in Paris, where it opened a new office in September 2022 co-led by Laurent Eymard. A month later, the firm unveiled former RBB Economics expert Tim Reuter as its new signing in Brussels. He joined a year after the consultancy brought in Adina Claici in the EU capital and Veronica Irastorza in San Francisco, who joined following stints in-house and in government in Mexico. The firm also brought in Alejandra Palacios, former head of Mexico’s Federal Economic Competition Commission, as an outside expert in February 2022.
The firm’s litigation practice has recorded especially impressive growth recently. Headlines for the team include assisting the Road Haulage Association in follow-on damages litigation against members of the Trucks cartel, which led to the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal granting the RHA its collective proceedings order application. A Brattle team also supported US Airways in its litigation against Sabre, which it accused of violating sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In this, analysis and testimony provided by Abrantes-Metz and external collaborator and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz was persuasive to the jury, who found in favour of the plaintiff on the section 2 claims. Brattle also contributed expert testimony and analysis in the closely watched Epic Games v Apple case.
International economic consultancy The Brattle Group provides expert testimony and economic analysis on antitrust and competition matters in a multitude of practice areas around the world. Our network of experts includes Nobel laureates, professors at leading universities, former chief economists at the Competition Bureau Canada and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP), and former economic staff at the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice. Brattle’s work spans numerous industries, including but not limited to technology, telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, insurance, financial services, and energy.
Brattle’s Antitrust & Competition practice has continued its focus on growth and expansion with further additions to our team. Within our US competition group, we welcomed California-based Principal Veronica Irastorza, who specializes in matters related to competition, arbitration, and energy, particularly in Mexico. Outside of the US, Brattle onboarded Principal Dr. Adina Claici, who is based in Brussels. Dr. Claici – who previously worked at DG COMP – specializes in mergers, competition policy, and state aid cases and provides clients with insights on competition policy developments in the EU. The additions of Ms. Irastorza and Dr. Claici aid Brattle in augmenting and developing our work in new and existing regions, including Latin America and Europe.
In addition, Brattle is pleased to announce our new Paris office, which officially opened its doors in the fall of 2022. This office is co-led by Principal Laurent Eymard – whose work focuses on mergers, antitrust, and state aid cases – and includes a team of antitrust, international arbitration, and energy experts. With this office, we welcomed Paris-based Academic Advisor Dr. David Spector, a Professor at the Paris School of Economics who works at the intersection of economics and mergers, collusion, and competition policy. The Paris office joins our other new offices in Beijing and Shanghai, which contribute to our growing skillset in Greater China and Asia more broadly.
The expansion of Brattle’s Competition team has strengthened our position as a preeminent group of competition economists, with a truly global team that is able to support client needs with complex and increasingly cross-border matters around the world. We provide testimony on in-depth and high-stakes economic issues related to anticompetitive effects, price fixing, damages claims, and monopolization conspiracies, and complete analyses for investigations conducted by national competition authorities and government institutions in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. We also evaluate large-scale corporate mergers and acquisitions deals, including in cases of efficiencies evaluations and merger reviews. Our experience spans a variety of complex horizontal and vertical transactions internationally.