Philip Nelson, PhD

Managing Director

Dr. Nelson is an expert in antitrust matters involving mergers, price fixing, unfair competition, vertical restraints, and the Robinson-Patman Act. Before joining Secretariat, he was the Assistant Director for Competition Analysis at the FTC.

Philip Nelson is a Managing Director at Secretariat. Before joining the firm, Dr. Nelson was Assistant Director for Competition Analysis at the FTC. He taught economics at Yale University and antitrust law at Fordham Law School. While at the FTC, he served on the FTC’s Merger Screening and Evaluation Committees. Dr. Nelson has written numerous articles and two books, “Corporations in Crisis: Behavioral Observations for Bankruptcy Policy” and “U.S. International Competitiveness.” He also helped edit the ABA Antitrust Section’s “Market Power Handbook: Competition Law and Economic Foundations.”

Dr. Nelson is an expert in antitrust matters involving mergers, price fixing, unfair competition, vertical restraints, and the Robinson-Patman Act. He has also served as an economic expert in matters and has testified in contract disputes (on damages and liability issues), intellectual property disputes (on secondary indicia of non-obviousness, damages, and irreparable harm), price gouging, FERC valuation hearings, and Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) compensation cases.

He has testified at trial before judges, juries, and arbitration panels. Among the industries he has analyzed are: pharmaceuticals, oil, natural gas, minerals, refining pipeline, gasoline retailing, oil field equipment, defense, pesticides, grocery products, wholesaling, publishing, vehicle manufacture, automotive parts, toys, electrical equipment, machine tools, plastics, chemicals, metals, household products, security exchanges, telecommunications, electrical utilities, insurance, cameras, computer hardware and software, integrated circuits, cable television, newspapers, fast-food, and health-care technologies and services.

Lexology Index notes, “Philip Nelson is a leading authority in antitrust economics, widely respected for combining rigorous academic insight with high-impact regulatory experience from his senior role at the FTC.  He also employs his strong competition background when testifying in intellectual property cases.

Dr. Nelson is currently on the ABA Antitrust Section’s Long Range Planning Committee and has served as the non-lawyer representative on the Section’s Council and as a chair and/or vice chair of the ABA Antitrust Section’s Content, Economics, Intellectual Property, and Health Care and Pharmaceuticals Committees.

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