The Justice Department’s lawsuit to block Anheuser-Busch InBev‘s $20.1 billion deal to buy control of Grupo Modelo is notable for many reasons.
One of them is that the fight puts the department’s antitrust division squarely at odds with its former head.
Leading the antitrust defense for Modelo is Christine Varney, who led the Justice Department’s antitrust unit until July of 2011 and is now a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.
Ms. Varney took control of the antitrust division in January of 2009, and is credited with beginning a revival of the team after years of dormancy under the Bush administration. Under her, the Justice Department sued several major credit card companies, alleging price-fixing. It also threatened to sueNasdaq OMX and the IntercontinentalExchange if they persisted in pursuing a hostile takeover bid for NYSE Euronext.
There’s another, lesser connection between the Justice Department and the Modelo case: Sharis A. Pozen, who was an interim replacement for Ms. Varney, now works for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, one of the main law firms for Anheuser-Busch InBev.
But Ms. Pozen, who led the government’s lawsuit seeking to block AT&T‘s proposed takeover of T-Mobile USA, isn’t involved in this case, a spokeswoman for Skadden said.
