Latham & Watkins recently hired Katherine Rocco as a partner in the global Antitrust and Competition Practice and as a member of the Litigation and Trial Department in its New York office. Rocco, who spent the last five years as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, has extensive experience in a variety of antitrust matters, including litigation, merger clearance, and transactional work. Rocco joins Latham during what she terms an “exciting atmosphere in the antitrust world,” according to Reuters.
President Biden’s Department of Justice (DoJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have adopted an antitrust mandate under which they have been cracking down on companies attempting to conduct mergers and acquisitions. The DoJ in particular has been active in halting a number of proposed mergers, including one between Spirit and Frontier Airlines and another between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. Rocco, who has worked on government investigations and antitrust litigation, said that at Latham, she will be focused on “getting mergers through DoJ and FTC review,” according to Reuters.
Rocco previously performed antitrust work for American Express, Qualcomm Inc, and several private equity clients. She has represented clients in complex merger litigation and has strong capabilities in spearheading large-scale domestic and international investigations. She also focuses on merger control matters and “has secured regulatory clearances for multi-billion dollar, cross-border transactions,” according to PR Newswire.
Marc Jaffe, Office Managing Partner of Latham in New York, expressed his excitement at bringing Rocco onto his firm’s team. Jaffe believes that Rocco’s “engaging and entrepreneurial spirit” mirrors the atmosphere of Latham’s New York offices, according to PR Newswire. Amanda Reeves, Global Chair of the Antitrust and Competition Practice at Latham, posits that Rocco will be an invaluable resource for Latham during this new era of antitrust enforcement at the federal level. The excitement is mutual, according to Rocco. She claims she was drawn to Latham because of its “elite antitrust practice, [its] global footprint, [its] entrepreneurial culture, and the firm’s strength across practice groups, particularly private equity and M&A.”
