Senior DOJ Antitrust Official Steps Down, Joins Fried Frank (1)

The No. 2 official in the Justice Department’s antitrust division has left government to return to private practice after a three-year stint helping lead many of the biggest merger investigations of the Trump administration.

Barry Nigro, who was the division’s principal deputy assistant attorney general, is returning to his old law firm, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP in Washington, where he will chair the global antitrust practice, the firm announced Monday.

Barry Nigro

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

Nigro joined the antitrust division from Fried Frank in August 2017, about three months before the administration sued to block AT&T Inc.’s acquisition of Time Warner Inc., a lawsuit the Justice Department ultimately lost. The case marked the first time in decades the government sued to block a merger between companies that didn’t compete directly, but it was clouded by politics because of President Donald Trump’s repeated criticism of Time Warner’s CNN.

After AT&T, Nigro went on to work on other high-profile deals, including Bayer AG’s $66 billion takeover of Monsanto Co. and T-Mobile US Inc.’s $26.5 billion acquisition of Sprint Corp. In both investigations, the Justice Department required asset sales worth billions of dollar to resolve concerns the deals would harm competition. States unsuccessfully sued to stop the Sprint deal earlier this year.

Nigro, who worked under Makan Delrahim, the head of the antitrust division, said Bayer is among the biggest accomplishments during his tenure. The 2018 settlement required the companies to sell $9 billion of assets to resolve the government’s concerns the deal would harm competition, one of the largest merger divestitures ever. The department came close to filing a lawsuit to block the merger, Nigro said in an interview.

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“It was necessary to require a broader divestiture so there was not a risk for consumers that R&D would be comprised going forward,” he said.

Still, the Justice Department under Trump hasn’t won any lawsuits blocking a merger. Besides the AT&T case, the antitrust division also lost a court challenge to Sabre Corp.’s proposed acquisition of Farelogix Inc., a deal that was later abandoned.

Nigro and Delrahim were recused from the government’s lawsuit last week against Alphabet Inc.’s Google, accusing the search giant of abusing its monopoly. The lawsuit marked the most significant monopoly case in the U.S. in two decades.

Nigro said U.S. antitrust enforcers should be scrutinizing dominant technology companies going forward and have room to use existing law more aggressively.

“There’s obviously a tremendous amount of concern in ensuring our tech markets are competitive, and it’s bipartisan,” he said. “It’s important that the antitrust agencies look closely at competition in those markets and bring the right cases where they need to.”

(Adds background on Nigro from third paragraph.)

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David McLaughlin in Washington at dmclaughlin9@bloomberg.net

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Bill Faries, Wendy Benjaminson

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