FTC to Name Covington Partner as Competition Bureau Chief

US Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan intends to name Henry Liu, a partner at the law firm Covington & Burling LLP, as the agency’s top competition official, according to two people familiar with the plan.

Liu is set to be named as the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, replacing Holly Vedova who is retiring after more than 30 years with the agency. The competition director heads the FTC’s merger and antitrust work, overseeing the agency’s teams of lawyers who handle probes and recommending which cases to litigate and which to settle.

Liu has spent the past 14 years in the Washington office at the firm, primarily representing companies in antitrust and consumer class actions including Procter & Gamble Co., Apple Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. A graduate of Yale Law School, Liu also clerked for a federal district judge in Ohio. While at Yale, Liu worked on the Yale Law Journal alongside Democratic FTC Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya.

He has also undertaken pro bono work representing transgender people challenging state laws and school policies and sits on the board of directors for the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, a non-profit that represents immigrants at risk of detention or deportation.

Because of his work at Covington, Liu may need to recuse from some of the FTC’s major cases. The law firm is representing Amazon.com Inc. in its proposed merger with iRobot Corp. as well as in the FTC’s ongoing antitrust probe into the company.

An FTC spokesman declined to comment. Liu didn’t respond to requests for comment.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Leah Nylen in Washington at lnylen2@bloomberg.net

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Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman

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