Dechert

United States: Washington DC

Dechert’s competitors call DC antitrust practice chairman Paul T Denis “a terrific lawyer” who is getting “great results”, and say the team is “really good across the board”. The former DoJ man is surrounded by partners with experience from both agencies. He says the firm has lost some associates to the public sector, and is looking to hire more. It expanded its DC partnership in January 2014 with former FTC attorney Gorav Jindal, who worked on 2013’s headline US Airways/American Airlines merger before promotion.

Immediately after the OfficeMax/Office Depot tie-up was cleared unconditionally, Denis says, Cerberus engaged him and partner Jim Fishkin, said by other merger specialists to “own supermarket mergers”, to represent Albertsons in the FTC review of its US$9.4 billion merger with Safeway, which was cleared with divestitures of fewer than 7 per cent of their stores. If the companies in a big-ticket deal do not hire Dechert, there’s a good chance a third party concerned about it will. The firm advises Gordon Food Service regarding the tie-up of competitors Sysco and US Foods, and a content provider in connection with the DoJ’s investigation of two telecommunications mergers. On the litigation side, partner Paul H Friedman is defending Dean Foods against a class action led by Food Lion as part of the long-running Southeastern Milk antitrust litigation, and represented a tech company in a non-public FTC investigation concerning its patent enforcement, which was closed without any action against the client.