We were grateful that approximately 200 of you participated in Cleary Gottlieb’s fourth annual M&A, Antitrust and the Board Room conference at the Federal Reserve building in San Francisco, hosted and co-sponsored by our friends at Berkeley Law School, as well as sponsors Innisfree M&A and MacKenzie Partners.

The day featured:

• SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson’s delivery of his controversial “The Case Against Corporate Royalty” speech, a thought-provoking follow-up talk by Doug Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, and a discussion with Michael Ronen, a leader of the Softbank Vision Fund; Lev Finkelstein, head of corporate finance at Dropbox; Wanji Walcott, general counsel of Paypal; Jean Rogers, chair of SASB; and Cleary partner Ethan Klingsberg.
• A vigorous debate about the role of innovation in antitrust merger review among Thomas Deisenhofer, EC Head of Merger Control; Richard Gilbert, former Deputy Assistant AG for Economics; Bruce Hoffman, Acting Director at the FTC’s Competition Bureau; and Cleary partners George Cary and Elaine Ewing.
• A candid dialogue between Vice Chancellor Tamika Montgomery-Reeves and Cleary partner Kim Spoerri about the nuances and future directions of Delaware fiduciary duty litigation.
• The latest from the front lines of proxy contests and activism defense from MacKenzie CEO Dan Burch and Innisfree Managing Director Scott Winter, as well as Anne Chapman, who recently joined Joele Frank after 20+ years of overseeing proxy voting at Capital Research; Yumi Narita of BlackRock; Zach Oleksiuk, who recently joined Evercore after leading BlackRock’s corporate governance work; and Cleary partner Glenn McGrory.

Photos, a detailed recap of the day’s discussions, the agenda, and a list of participants can be found here.

Please do not hesitate to contact any of your friends at Cleary Gottlieb to follow up on any of the matters raised at the conference.