What’s Really Driving the Business of White-Collar Defense?

Ryan Quillian’s commentary was included in a National Law Journal article on the growing demand for white-collar defense and what forces are driving the increase in activity. Ryan commented on volume of recent enforcement actions by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Between the FTC and DOJ, Ryan said the two federal antitrust agencies challenged 12 transactions in the 12-month period ending on September 30th, which is the lowest number of federal merger enforcement actions in the last 20 years. The next lowest was in fiscal year 2005, when the Bush administration challenged 18 transactions, he said. Ryan added that the agencies appear to be focused on rhetoric and process to deter merger activity, while relying on stronger anti-merger statements, more-aggressive policy positions such as their draft merger guidelines and higher procedural hurdles.

"Even though the actual number of enforcement actions that have been brought has decreased, there seems to be an increase in the number of second requests that the agencies are issuing. That’s a huge burden on companies and it increases their legal costs, because it’s essentially an enormous subpoena. That includes requests for data, lots of documents, written narrative responses, and all of that gets coordinated and produced through law firms so that increases the workload on that end as well."