Profile: Arthur J Burke

Competition

Biography: Competition

Arthur Burke is a member of Davis Polk & Wardwell's litigation department and practises in the Menlo Park and New York offices. Mr Burke represents clients in civil and criminal antitrust litigation matters and also advises clients on the competition law aspects of mergers and acquisitions.

Recent M&A-related antitrust representations include Comcast Corporation, the nation's largest cable company, in DoJ and FTC second-request investigations of a number of successful acquisitions, including its US$18 billion joint acquisition (with Time Warner) of Adelphia Communications (2005 to 2006) and its US$52 billion acquisition of AT&T's cable and broadband business (2001 to 2002); SLM Corp (Sallie Mae), the largest student lender in the US, in a DoJ investigation of its US$25 billion acquisition by a consortium of private equity and strategic buyers - the transaction was approved without conditions (2007); KLA-Tencor, a manufacturer of semiconductor test equipment, in a DoJ investigation and related German Federal Cartel Office phase II investigations of its acquisition of ADE Corp and Therma-Wave - the DoJ and FCO approved the transactions without conditions (2006 to 2007); McDATA Corporation, a manufacturer of switches and related equipment for storage area networks, in an FTC second-request investigation of its US$700 million acquisitions by Brocade - the FTC approved the deal without conditions (2006 to 2007); Argosy Gaming, a riverboat casino operator, in an FTC second-request investigation of its US$2.2 billion acquisition by Penn National Gaming - the transaction was approved with the divestiture of one casino (2005); and TheraSense, a diabetes equipment company, in an FTC investigation of its US$1.3 billion merger with Abbott Laboratories (2004).

Recent antitrust litigation matters include Comcast in two separate antitrust suits brought in 2006 by purported "independent" cable programmers seeking to compel carriage by Comcast - the district courts in both cases dismissed the claims; Comcast in an ongoing antitrust suit in Los Angeles federal court challenging the alleged practice of selling cable channels in "bundled tiers"; a former airline executive in an ongoing criminal grand jury investigation of alleged price fixing in the airline passenger business; and various clients (including AstraZeneca, Imperial Chemical Industries, and others) in cases alleging price-fixing conspiracies among competitors.

Mr Burke has also provided antitrust advice in connection with the formation of joint ventures and standard-setting organisations and consortia.

He joined Davis Polk in 1993 and became a partner in 2000.

Mr Burke graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and in 1992 received his JD, magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was an editor of the law review. He clerked for the Honorable Douglas H Ginsburg of the US Court of Appeals, DC circuit, from 1992 to 1993. He is admitted to the bars of California and New York.

Mr Burke is a member of the American Bar Association's section of antitrust law and is a vice chair of the antitrust section's intellectual property committee. He has contributed to the antitrust section's Antitrust Law Developments publications and to its Antitrust Law Journal and was co-editor of the section's Handbook on the Antitrust Aspects of Standard Setting (2004). He has also been a speaker at numerous antitrust seminars and conferences.