Biography: Competition

A partner in the litigation department and the managing partner of the Washington, DC office, Ken Gallo has substantial trial experience in antitrust, patent and major commercial disputes. He has tried cases involving the banking and payments industries, computer hardware and software products, medical and telecommunications equipment, commercial real estate and biotechnology products.

Mr Gallo regularly represents clients in private and government antitrust matters, including claims related to alleged monopolisation, tying, mergers and acquisitions, cartels and the interplay between the antitrust and intellectual property laws. He has been recognised as one of America's top antitrust, patent and commercial litigators by various publications including Chambers, Benchmark/Institutional Investor, Best Lawyers in America, Legal 500, and The National Law Journal.

Some of his representative antitrust matters include MasterCard Inc antitrust matters – for the past decade, Mr Gallo has represented MasterCard in a series of government and private antitrust actions. He has defended the company in civil investigations and lawsuits brought by the United States; in private suits brought by competitors under the Sherman Act for alleged exclusive dealing and group boycotts; against class action merchant complaints of alleged illegal tying and price fixing; and against claims brought by classes of indirect purchasers in more than 20 states.

He has advised on cartel matters – he represented US and foreign companies from a variety of industries in DOJ price fixing investigations, including a Japanese manufacturer of liquid crystal display units, a US corporation in the transportation industry, a Japanese manufacturer of high technology products, and a European carbon manufacturer. Mr Gallo has served as coordinating counsel for worldwide investigations involving competition authorities in the US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Brazil and the EU.

His class action litigation experience includes experience in AIG Inc/Commercial Insurance Class Action Litigation; electronics aftermarket antitrust litigation – he represented a major European electronics company against a series of Kodak theory antitrust class actions related to telecommunications, cellular telephone, and high-speed copying and printing equipment; and magazine publishers antitrust litigation – he represented a major publisher in class action litigation alleging price fixing of magazine subscriptions.

For Citigroup Inc, he secured dismissal of a pair of class action lawsuits in which plaintiffs alleged that Citigroup manipulated the market for auction rate securities.

He is currently representing Dow Jones – a subsidiary of News Corp – in an antitrust litigation relating to lending services.