Fourth Annual Chicago Forum on International ... - Mayer Brown

The acquisition of ADVO, Inc., by Valassis Communications, Inc., which
combined two large marketing services providers; and
H.I.G. Capital’s acquisition of Severn Trent Laboratories, which was merged with
TestAmerica Inc. to create the largest environmental testing company in the US.
Nick began his legal career as an attorney in the Mergers III and I Divisions of the
Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition. During his eight years with the
FTC, Nick led merger investigations in a wide variety of industries, four of which
resulted in asset divestitures pursuant to consent agreements and three of which
resulted in the parties abandoning their proposed transactions.
Nick earned his J.D. in 1994 from Georgetown University and his B.A. in 1990 from
Michigan State University. He is admitted to the bars in Illinois and Washington, D.C.
WILLIAM E. KOVACIC is the Global Competition Professor of Law and Policy and the
Director of the Competition Law Center at the George Washington University Law
School. Kovacic joined the George Washington faculty in 1999.
From January 2006 to October 2011, Professor Kovacic was a member of the Federal
Trade Commission, He chaired the agency from March 2008 until March 2009. From
January 2009 to September 2011, he served as Vice Chair for Outreach of the
International Competition Network. Professor Kovacic was the FTC’s General Counsel
from 2001 through 2004, and also worked for the Commission from 1979 until 1983,
initially in the Bureau of Competition’s Planning Office and later as an attorney advisor
to former Commissioner George W. Douglas.
Kovacic was a member of the faculty at the George Mason University School of Law
from 1986 to 1999. From 1983 to 1986, he practiced antitrust and government
contracts law with Bryan Cave’s Washington, DC, office. Earlier in his career, Kovacic
spent one year on the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust
and Monopoly Subcommittee.
Beginning in 1992, Kovacic was an adviser on antitrust and consumer protection issues
to the governments of Armenia, Benin, Egypt, El Salvador, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia,
Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Panama, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and
Zimbabwe.
BRUNO LASSERRE is a member of the Conseil d’État, the French supreme
administrative court, which he joined in 1978 after graduating from École Nationale
d’Administration (ENA), the French national school for civil service.
Between 1989 and 1997, he served as Director for Regulatory Affairs, and then Director
General for Posts and Telecommunications at the French Ministry of Posts and
Telecommunications. In this position, he developed and implemented a comprehensive
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