Professional notice
Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP has been part of New York's legal landscape for 124 years. With some of "the best competition lawyers in the US", as one rival puts it, the firm's antitrust practice is now a well-established feature of the city's legal scene. Partners Kevin J Arquit, Aimee H Goldstein and Joseph Tringali, together with of counsel Kenneth R Logan, are all Who's Who nominees. Arquit is a former director of the Federal Trade Commission's bureau of competition; he joined from Clifford Chance in 2003. All told, Simpson Thacher's New York antitrust team comprises seven partners, two of counsel, one senior counsel, one counsel, 11 senior associates and 22 associates
Logan says the practice puts equal emphasis on deal work and litigation, "although there will often be periods where one is more prominent than the other". He adds that because of the firm's strong M&A practice, plenty of transactional work comes their way, although "because of our reputation, we'll often get deal work even when there's no corporate work". Recent matters include advising Sirius on its complicated satellite-radio merger with XM, and DoubleClick on its acquisition by Google. Simpson Thacher also advised securities company Mellon on the US$16.5 billion acquisition by The Bank of New York. Furthermore, the firm provided antitrust-only work for Dow Jones on its takeover by Newscorp, PanAmSat on its three-to-two takeover of IntelSat, and Smithfield on its purchase of rival pork-processor Premium Standard.
On the litigation front, Simpson Thacher is defending Viacom against a class action over alleged bundling of programme services, Virgin in the alleged air cargo and air passenger cartels, and MasterCard.