A. Douglas Melamed, Former Head of DOJ Antitrust Division, Joins Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering

Business Wire,  April 26, 2001  

Tags: U.S. Department of Justice

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Business Editors

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2001

Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering is pleased to announce that A. Douglas Melamed, the former Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division, is returning to the Firm as a partner.

Mr. Melamed joins the Firm's Antitrust and Competition Practice Group, which consists of 50 full-time competition lawyers divided evenly between the United States and Europe.

Prior to heading the Antitrust Division, Mr. Melamed served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General from October 1996 to September 2000. During his 4 1/2-year tenure at the Antitrust Division, he was responsible for civil non-merger and merger investigations and litigation involving, at various times, most of the Division's litigating sections.

His appellate litigation responsibilities extended to both civil and criminal antitrust cases and amicus briefs in the Supreme Court and lower courts.

Internationally, he worked with current WCP partner Chuck Stark, then section chief of the Foreign Commerce Section, in negotiating bilateral and multilateral agreements with foreign competition agencies, representing the United States at the OECD, WTO and other international forums, and coordinating transnational civil and criminal antitrust investigations.

In addition, Mr. Melamed was responsible for policy matters involving, among others, the electricity and tobacco industries.

William J. Kolasky, Co-Chairman of WCP's Antitrust and Competition Practice Group, commented: "Doug is one of the leading antitrust thinkers and practitioners of our generation. The period in which he and Joel Klein headed up the Justice Department's Antitrust Division is justifiably viewed as a Golden Age of Antitrust."

William J. Perlstein, Chairman of the Firm's Management Committee, said: "We are thrilled that Doug is rejoining us. He is one of the true leaders of the antitrust bar. We already have one of the leading antitrust/competition practices in the United States and Europe; and Doug's return, along with our recent additions of Chuck Stark from Justice and Veronica Kayne from the FTC, will give us an unparalleled ability to serve our clients' needs both in Washington and in Brussels."

Before joining the Antitrust Division, Mr. Melamed was a partner of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and served as Chairman of the Firm's Antitrust and Consumer Protection Practice Group. He has been the Distinguished Visitor from Practice and an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.

He is the author of numerous articles on antitrust and on law-and-economics, including the seminal article Property Rules, Liability Rules and Inalienability - One View of the Cathedral, 85 Harvard Law Review 1089 (1972), co-authored with Guido Calabresi.

Mr. Melamed received his B.A. from Yale University (magna cum laude) in 1967 and his J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard in 1970, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Charles M. Merrill of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The return of Mr. Melamed to WCP reflects the continued expansion of the Firm's integrated transatlantic antitrust and competition practice.

Mr. Melamed's expertise in non-merger investigations and litigation, particularly in the technology, telecommunications and financial services sectors, as well as his experience in the merger review process, will complement the expertise of the Firm's European competition practices.

Just as the Firm's clients have enjoyed having a single firm responsible for all merger clearances to ensure consistency and unity of purpose in the face of ever increasing cooperation among competition authorities, the addition of Mr. Melamed enhances WCP's ability to provide comprehensive and cutting-edge advice on transatlantic civil and criminal investigations and litigation.

Key cases on which WCP lawyers in Europe and the United States have recently cooperated, include the AOL/Time Warner, Tetra Laval/Sidel, Unilever/Bestfoods, and Deutsche Telekom/ VoiceStream/Powertel mergers; the dominance investigations of Coca-Cola and Network Solutions; civil investigations into the Lufthansa alliances; antitrust litigation in the technology, securities and German coal industries; and several successfully concluded (and therefore confidential) cartel investigations.

Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering is an international law firm with offices in Washington, D.C., New York, London, Brussels, Berlin, Northern Virginia and Baltimore. The firm has more than 400 lawyers engaged in a broad practice spanning the full range of corporate transactions, regulatory work, high-stakes litigation, cross-border transactions, and international arbitration.

Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering's Antitrust & Competition Practice

With more than 50 antitrust and competition lawyers in the firm's Washington, New York, Brussels, London and Berlin offices, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering offers tremendous breadth, depth and experience on virtually every type of competition issue.