Elai Katz

PARTNER

Elai's practice focuses principally on a wide range of antitrust law matters, including litigation, mergers and acquisitions, counseling, and government investigations. He also has significant experience in intellectual property counseling and litigation as well as general commercial litigation.

Elai has represented clients in the financial, publishing, music, chemical and food industries in a variety of antitrust litigation matters, including complex class actions alleging price fixing and monopolization, as well as disputes involving distribution arrangements and price discrimination. He regularly advises clients on the formation of joint ventures, development of distribution and marketing arrangements and pricing policies, participation in trade association activities and interaction with competitors.  

Elai has successfully guided a broad range of transactions through the antitrust regulatory review process in the United States and abroad. He has represented many types of buyers and sellers, including private equity funds, insurance companies, chemical and pharmaceutical companies, automotive component makers, steel suppliers, online retailers and others. Elai has a particularly strong record in obtaining quick and positive resolutions during the early phases of merger reviews and is particularly attuned to the role global antitrust review plays in negotiating and completing mergers and acquisitions.

Elai is recognized among the top antitrust lawyers in New York by Chambers USA and by PLC Which Lawyer? for competition/antitrust.

M & A Transactions

• Advised Elan Corporation, plc in the $960 million merger of the company's drug delivery business, Elan Drug Technologies, with Alkermes, Inc., a Massachusetts drug delivery biotechnology company.
• Representation of the parent of White Birch Paper Company, the second largest producer of newsprint in North America, in the $350 million acquisition of rival SP Newsprint.
• Successfully defended a waste removal and disposal company in an antitrust challenge to its acquisition of two significant competitors.
• Persuading the Department of Justice to close a major investigation of a client's completed acquisition of a principal rival (a cooling technology and engineering firm).
• Successfully negotiated a consent decree with FTC to enable a client to sell a subsidiary to a competitor in the defense and aerospace industry.
• Representation of Sequa Corporation in its $2.4 billion acquisition by The Carlyle Group before U.S. and E.U. antitrust authorities.
• Representation of Metaldyne in its $1.2 billion acquisition by Asahi Tec before U.S. and foreign antitrust authorities.
• Representation of Engelhard Corporation in its $4.5 billion acquisition by BASF before U.S. and foreign antitrust authorities.
• Representation Sola International in its $1.2 billion merger with rival lens-maker Carl Zeiss, and successfully obtaining approval from antitrust authorities in the U.S., Europe, Australia and Switzerland.
• Representation of Validus Holdings, Ltd. in its acquisition of rival reinsurer IPC Holdings, Ltd., creating a combined firm with approximately $3.4 billion in shareholders' equity.
• Representation of Elan Corporation, plc in its transaction with Johnson & Johnson, involving an $885 million minority investment in Elan and the acquisition of Elan's Alzheimer's Immunotherapy Program.
• Representation a music label in formation and modification of a research and development joint venture with a competitor.

Litigation Matters

• Defended online media companies in an antitrust suit alleging anticompetitive conduct in the setting of pay-per-click fees for the redistribution of bank-rate data.
• Defended an insurance company in an action alleging industry-wide conspiracy and boycott against a healthcare provider.
• Defended an underwriter of IPOs in a price-fixing lawsuit brought by two classes of plaintiffs against over 20 defendants.
• Defended 3M against a monopolization complaint in Nicsand v. 3M before the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The complaint was dismissed, en banc, in a 10-4 vote.
• Defended a music company in price fixing and resale price maintenance class actions.
• Successfully defended a magazine publisher from claims of a conspiracy to fix prices of magazine subscriptions and obtained settlement with no money damages to the purported class.
• Represented a drug company in a monopolization class action.
• Successfully represented NY1 News in a copyright dispute, defeating a challenge to the broadcast of a video of the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

Elai writes and speaks frequently on antitrust topics. He is the author of entries on Joint Ventures, Financial Institutions and Insurance in recent editions of the Annual Review of Antitrust Law Developments (one of the leading antitrust treatises) and a chapter on the Donnelly Act in the New York State Bar Associations' New York Antitrust and Consumer Protection Law (Third Edition). Elai has participated as a panelist and moderator in the Annual Review of Antitrust Developments at the 2006 and 2010-2012 Antitrust Law Section Symposium, part of the annual meeting of the New York State Bar Association. He has moderated and participated in panels on a wide range of topics, including settlement of patent litigation (2009), resale price maintenance post-Leegin (2008), New York's Donnelly Act (2010), post-closing reviews of mergers (2008), and antitrust and the financial crisis (2008).