Amanda Wait

• Served as trial counsel to a French merchant firm in the DOJ challenge of the sale of a cane sugar refining company's refinery to an agriculture company and obtaining a complete win at the district court enabling the successful completion of the acquisition.

Select healthcare experience:

• Successfully advised a major health system in its strategic combination in review by the Federal Trade Commission; after considering potential horizontal overlap, cross-market theories, and labor market impacts, the FTC closed its investigation without action.
• Represented a health technology company as a non-party witness in the DOJ's investigation and litigation challenge of the proposed acquisition of the health technology company by a healthcare services company’s subsidiary and successfully advocated to remove the client from the trial witness list and prevented all client documents from becoming public trial exhibits.
• Served as counsel to a not-for-profit, faith-based healthcare system in the FTC investigation and litigation of its proposed acquisition of a hospital from a healthcare company.
• Obtained antitrust clearance after an FTC investigation for a strategic laboratory outsourcing arrangement for a major Texas hospital system.

Select energy experience:

• Advised a major US energy company in a vertical acquisition that received a second request from the Federal Trade Commission.
• Negotiated a consent decree for an energy corporation after a DOJ investigation into alleged premature exercise of control raising novel theories of antitrust violations under the HSR Act.
• Advised a major energy company before the FTC in multiple strategic refining divestiture transactions and obtained early termination of the HSR waiting period in each to enable the client to move forward with extensive integration process relating to the sale
• Advised a major energy company in multiple FTC investigations, including into another energy company's proposed acquisition of a company that distributes and markets petroleum products.

Select retail and consumer products experience:

• Developed and led the global merger clearance strategy for a transportation industry manufacturer in a strategic, multi-billion euro transaction; by anticipating the likely questions, the client obtained clearance during the initial review periods in all reviewing jurisdictions.
• Developed and led the strategy to obtain merger clearance in four jurisdictions for a global packaging company in a strategic transaction valued in excess of US$1 billion and the deal cleared in all reviewing jurisdictions after the initial advocacy without issuance of second request or equivalent in foreign jurisdictions.
• Successfully obtained premerger clearance for an international retailer's strategic acquisition to expand product offerings into an adjacent product and service areas in a deal valued in excess of US$500 million.
• Negotiated a settlement with the FTC for strategic divestitures in order to obtain clearance after a second request for one of the world's largest retail supermarket chains.
• Advised a leading provider of funeral and cemetery services in its US$1.4 billion strategic merger reviewed by the FTC and several state attorneys general where the reviewing agencies cleared the transaction with divestitures after a second request.
• Advised a music corporation in its US$1.9 billion acquisition of the recorded music business of another music company; after a second request and an extensive investigation, the FTC voted to close its investigation without requiring divestitures or other remedies.
• Served as trial counsel to a computer company in a patent infringement case that went to full trial on the merits on antitrust counterclaims. 
• Served as counsel to a major airline before the DOJ in its successful acquisition of another airline; following a second request and extensive investigation, the DOJ closed its investigation without requiring any divestitures or other remedies.
• Served as trial counsel to the FTC in its challenge to the proposed merger of a supermarket chain and a producer of natural and organic food distributed through partnerships in the US.

• Co-authored, "FTC's Criminal Liaison Unit Enhances Merger Risks - Law360," Law360, May 2023
• Co-authored, " Would Proposed FTC Noncompete Ban Apply To Nonprofits?" Law360, March 2023
• Co-authored, "US merger enforcement is down? Lessons from the FY2021 HSR Annual Report," Washington Legal Foundation, February 2023
• Co-authored, "Antitrust Road Map To Vertical Integration Of Latest Car Tech," Law360, September 2022
• Co-authored, "New FTC Commissioner's Potential Impact on Healthcare Antitrust Review," Competition Policy International, May 2022
• Co-authored, "HSR Statistics Show Increasing Scrutiny Of Health Care M8cA," Law360, May 2022
• Co-authored, "Data On Biden's Tough Antitrust Stance Paints Subtler Picture," Law360, February 2022
• Co-authored, "Working group to update pharmaceutical merger review in the US, Canada, UK and Europe," Concurrences 2022 Antitrust Writing Awards, January 2022

Amanda has been widely quoted in the press including:

• Quoted, "Big Deals Being Chilled by Biden's Aggressive Antitrust Agenda," Bloomberg Law, May 2023
• Quoted, "US Antitrust Enforcers Are Chilling Big Mergers," Bloomberg Law, May 2023
• Quoted, "FTC's non-compete ban could apply to nonprofits, former staffers say" Modern Healthcare, May 2023
• Quoted, "FTC Must Avoid 'Whack-a-Mole' to Make Its Noncompete Ban Stick," Bloomberg Law, January 2023
• Quoted, "Noncompete Ban Tees Up 1st Test Of FTC's Rule Powers," Law360, January 2023
• Quoted, "Wall Street Has Jitters Over ICE-Black Knight Antitrust Concerns," Bloomberg Law, May 2022