Cooley grows antitrust team

Cooley grows antitrust team

The firm has hired Caroline Hobson and Ethan Glass respectively in Washington, DC and London

With recent hires from Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and CMS in London and Washington DC, Cooley is strengthening its antitrust capabilities.

Ethan Glass joins the global litigation team from Quinn Emmanuel, where he served as chair of the litigation specialists' antitrust investigations and government enforcement practice. Caroline Hobson joins CMS in London, where she was co-head of the firm's competition and trade practice.

In the wake of a flurry of antitrust and competition enforcement activity around the globe, particularly within the tech and life sciences industries, Cooley's antitrust and competition practice group chair, Jacqueline Grise, said that the firm has bolstered its antitrust and competition team by hiring new attorneys.

Hobson's expertise includes the clearance of high-profile mergers, the management of competition law-related risks and the conduct of market investigations as well as broader regulatory issues including public procurement. She has defended mergers before the EU and UK Competition and Markets Authority and focuses her practice on the life sciences, consumer goods and financial services industries. She worked at Dechert for a little more than three years before joining CMS in 2000.

As an attorney specializing in the life sciences sector, Greise believes Hobson's skills will help his clients "navigate large and complex cross-border M&A transactions" with greater success.

As a former partner at Quinn Emanuel, as a trial attorney and as an assistant chief in the Department of Justice's antitrust division, Glass has more than a decade of experience handling government investigations and antitrust litigation. As per his LinkedIn profile, he served eight years at the DOJ before joining Quinn Emanuel in 2016.

He was responsible for major issues in a number of major industries while working at the DOJ, including the tech and life sciences sectors, the credit cards industry, the financial exchange sector, and the real estate sector.

Cooley's global litigation chair, Michael Attansio, said: "Ethan's accomplishments in high-stakes litigation reflect our investment in building our antitrust enforcement and litigation capability to protect the interests of our clients as they compete in the world of competition-related investigations and litigation, as well as merger challenges against the FTC and DOJ."

In May of last year, Cooley also opened an office in Chicago, where it hired nine partners from Winston & Strawn, Latham & Watkins, and DLA Piper. After this, three more litigation partners joined the office in July, including ex-DOJ attorney Matthew Kutcher and Latham's former Chicago litigation group chair.

Cooley's revenues grew by 8percent to $1.9 billion last year, while profit per equity partner spiked 28percent to $4 million, largely because of the surge of SPAC deals that occurred in the US tech sector. London's growth was even more impressive, as revenue grew by 50percent to hit $105m from $70m during the same period in 2020.

It is also worth noting that Glass' departure from Quinn Emanuel follows the loss of Boris Bronfentrinker, the head of Quinn Emanuel's UK litigation practice, to Willkie Farr & Gallagher in London last October, along with partners Elaine Whiteford and Nicola Chesaites and "at least eight" associates.