President Donald J. Trump announced his intention to nominate (i) Joseph Simons to serve as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") and (ii) Rohit Chopra to serve as an FTC Commissioner.
Mr. Simons served as Director of the FTC Bureau of the Competition (the "Bureau") from 2001-03 (during the George W. Bush administration). While serving in this position, Mr. Simons (i) initiated more than 100 investigations into potentially anticompetitive mergers and business practices and (ii) brought a record number of non-merger enforcement actions. Under Mr. Simons, the Bureau investigated practices in several industries, and Mr. Simons was an important part of efforts to prevent companies from utilizing exemptions from antitrust laws as a means to limit competition. Mr. Simons also has private practice antitrust merger and litigation experience.
Mr. Chopra is a Senior Fellow at the Consumer Federation of America. Previously, he was an Assistant Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he was involved in enforcement actions resulting in substantial relief for student-loan borrowers and is credited as having established a state-of-the-art student-loan complaint system. Mr. Chopra also worked as a Special Advisor for the U.S. Department of Education. Mr. Chopra would be the first non-lawyer to serve as an FTC Commissioner since Orson Swindle (1997-2005).
For additional information please see this Memorandum, authored by Cadwalader partner Amy Ray, who worked with Mr. Simons as co-counsel during his tenure in private practice.
Commentary / Amy Ray
Given his background, it is likely that Mr. Simons will be an aggressive enforcer, fulfilling the President's promise to utilize antitrust and consumer-protection law to protect markets and consumers from unfair, anticompetitive and deceptive practices. Presently focused on consumer-protection issues relevant to students and military families, Mr. Chopra can be expected to push the FTC to adopt policies and pursue enforcement actions that may not be in favor at his previous agency, the CFPB, given that the current director of the CFPB was appointed under the prior administration. The FTC has a significantly broader consumer protection mandate than the CFPB. As such, the appointment will give Mr. Chopra the opportunity to press for an aggressive, broad-based enforcement agenda.
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