compass lexecon FTI

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/climate/fti-consulting.html

How One Firm Drove Influence Campaigns Nationwide for Big Oil

FTI, a global consulting firm, helped design, staff and run organizations and websites funded by energy companies that can appear to represent grass-roots support for fossil-fuel initiatives.

The headquarters of FTI, which has a prominent role in influence campaigns supporting fossil fuels, in Washington.]

By Hiroko Tabuchi

Nov. 11, 2020

In early 2017, the Texans for Natural Gas website went live to urge voters to “thank a roughneck” and support fracking. Around the same time, the Arctic Energy Center ramped up its advocacy for drilling in Alaskan waters and in a vast Arctic wildlife refuge. The next year, the Main Street Investors Coalition warned that climate activism doesn’t help mom-and-pop investors in the stock market.

All three appeared to be separate efforts to amplify local voices or speak up for regular people.

On closer look, however, the groups had something in common: They were part of a network of corporate influence campaigns designed, staffed and at times run by FTI Consulting, which had been hired by some of the largest oil and gas companies in the world to help them promote fossil fuels.

...

An examination of FTI’s work provides an anatomy of the oil industry’s efforts to influence public opinion in the face of increasing political pressure over climate change, an issue likely to grow in prominence, given President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s pledge to pursue bolder climate regulations. The campaigns often obscure the industry’s role, portraying pro-petroleum groups as grass-roots movements.

As part of its services to the industry, FTI monitored environmental activists online, and in one instance an employee created a fake Facebook persona — an imaginary, middle-aged Texas woman with a dog — to help keep tabs on protesters. Former FTI employees say they studied other online influence campaigns and compiled strategies for affecting public discourse. They helped run a campaign that sought a securities rule change, described as protecting the interests of mom-and-pop investors, that aimed to protect oil and gas companies from shareholder pressure to address climate and other concerns....

FTI employees also staffed two news and information sites, Energy In Depth and Western Wire, writing pro-industry articles on fracking, climate lawsuits and other hot-button issues. Former employees familiar with Energy In Depth said the site’s content had direction from Exxon Mobil,one of the major clients of the FTI division that worked on these oil and gas campaigns.

The Energy In Depth website notes its affiliation with an energy trade group [ipaa?] that Exxon is a member of, though not Exxon’s role in directing content that the site published.

This article is based on interviews with a dozen former FTI employees, including former managing directors, a review of hundreds of internal FTI documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites. In all, FTI has been involved in the operations of at least 15 current and past influence campaigns promoting fossil-fuel interests in addition to its direct work for oil and gas clients.

Matthew Bashalany, an FTI spokesman, disputed the idea that FTI worked behind the scenes for these groups. [FTI lies in its own defense][1] “We hide behind no one,” he said.

“We summarily reject as false, misleading and defamatorythe general narrative and specific claims,” he said. “We hold ourselves to the highest professional and ethical standards of conduct; when and where shortfalls are identified in this regard, they are addressed appropriately.”

This is just a reminder that the real war in America is over winning hearts and minds. The goal for rich and powerful people and interests is gaining and maintaining wealth and power. The goal for the masses, or the mob as the radical right sees it, is a better deal based on less economic inequality and special interest over public interest influence (i.e., money and power).

This is an all-out war of dark free speech (lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation, self-serving motivated reasoning, etc.) against the masses. Unfortunately, dark free speech is more powerful than honest free speech. The playing field is heavily tilted in favor of the rich and powerful as it usually is and has been throughout history.

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fTI, a global consulting firm, helped design, staff and run organizations and websites funded by energy companies that can appear to represent grass-roots support for fossil-fuel initiatives.

All three appeared to be separate efforts to amplify local voices or speak up for regular people.

As part of its services to the industry, FTI monitored environmental activists online, and in one instance an employee created a fake Facebook persona — an imaginary, middle-aged Texas woman with a dog — to help keep tabs on protesters. Former FTI employees say they studied other online influence campaigns and compiled strategies for affecting public discourse. They helped run a campaign that sought a securities rule change, described as protecting the interests of mom-and-pop investors, that aimed to protect oil and gas companies from shareholder pressure to address climate and other concerns.

FTI employees also staffed two news and information sites, Energy In Depth and Western Wire, writing pro-industry articles on fracking, climate lawsuits and other hot-button issues. Former employees familiar with Energy In Depth said the site’s content had direction from Exxon Mobil, one of the major clients of the FTI division that worked on these oil and gas campaigns.

The Energy In Depth website notes its affiliation with an energy trade group that Exxon is a member of, though not Exxon’s role in directing content that the site published.

This article is based on interviews with a dozen former FTI employees, including former managing directors, a review of hundreds of internal FTI documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites. In all, FTI has been involved in the operations of at least 15 current and past influence campaigns promoting fossil-fuel interests in addition to its direct work for oil and gas clients.

Matthew Bashalany, an FTI spokesman, disputed the idea that FTI worked behind the scenes for these groups. “We hide behind no one,” he said.

“We summarily reject as false, misleading and defamatory the general narrative and specific claims,” he said. “We hold ourselves to the highest professional and ethical standards of conduct; when and where shortfalls are identified in this regard, they are addressed appropriately.”

An Exxon spokesman, Casey Norton, said he would not comment on the findings because he considered the reporter to be biased against the fossil fuel industry. Kathleen Sgamma, a spokeswoman for the Western Energy Alliance, which funds Western Wire, said her group had been open about its partnership with FTI and about its approach to fracking.

The business of corporate consulting and public relations is vast, and countless companies routinely provide media outreach, public messaging, crisis management and other services. FTI is among them, and it has taken up an important role in helping promote the messages of the fossil fuel industry.

Those messages have sometimes run counter to the scientific consensus that the world must burn less oil and gas to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Texans for Natural Gas, for example, has downplayed the magnitude of emissions of methane, the prime component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas production.

FTI’s work is the latest chapter in a long history of campaigns by the fossil fuel industry, political strategists and public relations professionals to influence climate policy. The industry has faced tough headwinds this year, in particular, as demand for oil and gas has tumbled amid the pandemic.

Founded in 1982 in Annapolis, Md., as a firm that provided expert witnesses and presentations for litigation,FTI has grown into a multinational firm that employs almost 5,000 people in 28 countries. Its business spans a wide range of services, from business consulting to crisis communications.

One of FTI’s largest shareholders, the investment firm BlackRock, won kudos this year for saying it would put environmental sustainability at the center of its investment approach. Main Street Investors, one of FTI’s projects, has spoken out against shareholders who press corporations on climate and other issues — an effort that would seem to be in conflict with BlackRock’s stance.

Mr. Bashalany, the FTI spokesman, said the firm’s work “in no way contravenes — nor is it misaligned with” BlackRock’s statement. BlackRock declined to comment.

‘Do something big’

On a clear day in July, a plane soared over America’s biggest oil and gas field with a banner trailing behind it that read: “Thank you essential oil and gas workers.”

“We wanted to do something big, and what’s bigger than an airplane with a banner?” Elizabeth Caldwell of Texans for Natural Gas said in a statement. The group, which describes itself as a local organization representing “citizens and officeholders, business owners and students” with more than 400,000 supporters, is funded by oil and gas companies includingXTO Energy, an Exxon subsidiary, according to its website.

The statement identifies Ms. Caldwell as “a spokeswoman for thegrass-roots organization.”She is also a director at FTI, according to her LinkedIn page. (There was nothing unusual about an organization receiving corporate support and public relations help, FTI’s spokesman said.)

Acting as Texans for Natural Gas representatives, FTI employees have launched pro-industry petitions, produced videos and reports on the importance of thePermian Basin oil field, and writtenopinion pieces for local newspapers supporting fossil fuels. The site features testimonials from three women, two of whom are represented with stock photos and one with a photo used without permission from the Flickr page of a photographer in the Philippines.

FTI’s Mr. Bashalany acknowledged the use of the stock photos and said adjustments would be made to avoid confusion. He said the supporters and testimonials were real.

Texans for Natural Gas has also shared misleading information about greenhouse gas emissions. In 2018, it issued a study inaccurately claiming that emissions of methane had decreased significantly in the heart of Texas oil country at the height of the fracking boom.

To arrive at that conclusion, scientists say, the report tallied data from the Environmental Protection Agency that the agency itself states does not represent overall emissions: The numbers, which are reported by the energy industry about a limited number of compressor stations and other facilities, do not include emissions from the area’s thousands of wells.The data are “too low by at least a factor of two, and quite likely more,” said Robert W. Howarth, a professor at Cornell University who has researched methane emissions.

FTI stood by the report, calling its findings “on track with broader trends in Texas’ oil fields.”

Texans for Natural Gas is just one campaign run with the help ofFTI employees. Others include: Citizens to Protect PA Jobs, New Mexicans for Economic Prosperity, the Liberty Energy Project and the Arctic Energy Center, according to interviews, internal documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites.

Another such organization, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said of FTI in a statement: “We are proud to have them as a contract partner, especially when it comes to direct and transparent media support.”

‘Susan,’ the fake Facebook user

Within FTI, a group called StratCom, short for Strategic Communications, focuses on industry messaging campaigns. In the United States, the group is led by Brian Kennedy, former press secretary for the office of the House minority leader and a former spokesman for Transocean, the drilling contractor involved in the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The StratCom group studied environmental protesters on behalf of the driller Apache Energy.Apache was seeking to drill near Balmorhea State Park in Texas and was concerned that protesters were planning camps similar to those set up to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, according to two people with direct knowledge of the work.

One FTI document prepared for Apache, dated Jan. 25, 2017, included a link to a list of groceries and camp supplies compiled by organizers, which the document said provided a hint of the proposed camp’s size.

The fictitious Facebook profile — of a Texas woman named Susan McDonald who likes ice cream, the movie “Annie” and her local farmers’ market — was also intended to help FTI keep tabs on activists, former FTI employees said. The “friends” list on the fake profile, which remained present on Facebook as of Wednesday, includes one current and one former FTI employee.

Mr. Bashalany of FTI said, “A Facebook profile was created by a formeremployee to monitor social media anonymously. This was wrong, and it is against our policy.”

Apache declined to comment on the substance of the reporting.

StratCom employees also studied and developed strategies designed to influence public discourse, according to five former employees. An internal document dated Nov. 20, 2015, laid out various techniques. The “Semantic Nitpicker,” the document explained, “asks an endless series of questions.” The “Dog Typing on a Keyboard” uses “very poor grammar, spelling and punctuation and posts frequently to clutter up the thread and make it hard to read.”

A successful effort, the document advised, might use several commenters, “each with an assigned role.”

Mr. Bashalany said senior managers were never aware of the document and it “never informed any activities or approaches to social or digital media engagement of any kind.”

Other campaigns used common techniques, buying social media ads to target people with interests in Alaska and energy and steer them toward the Arctic Energy Center, an industry-funded site that promoted drilling in the waters off Alaska and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Exxon was a backer of the Arctic Energy Center, according to documents and people who worked on the project. An FTI presentation prepared for Exxon, dated July 13, 2016, showed Exxon was scheduled to spend $120,000 over six months across social-media platforms, a draft budget dated the previous month shows.

The Arctic Energy Center’s website has since been taken down.

Climate lawsuit spurs action

In 2018, as New York City moved to sue Exxon Mobil and other fossil fuel companies, claiming that the companies had defrauded shareholders by downplaying climate change, a team within FTI’s StratCom group prepared a pushback.

The task at hand was to produce an article and tweets for Energy In Depth, the pro-industry site. The target:Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who was under fire at the time for his SUV use.

According to an internal planning calendar, one tweet should show “Bill de Blasio in a giant SUV, wearing shirt that says WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, or maybe a speech bubble with WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS!”

New York lost that court battle.

According to its website, Energy In Depth is a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a trade organization representing hundreds of mostly smaller oil and gas producers. FTI employees familiar with the project said the site’s content had direction from Exxon. FTI employees also wrote much of the content published on Energy In Depth.

In a statement, an Independent Petroleum Association of America senior vice president,Jeff Eshelman, said “support for Energy In Depth comes from a wide segment of industry.”

Mr. Bashalany, the FTI spokesman, said, “Any contention that it is supported in whole or even substantially in part by one company is categorically false.” He said FTI staff members reach out to companies, academics and others for input, “not the other way around.”

Energy In Depth, along with the other industry-funded site that FTI helps run, Western Wire, has been central to the fossil fuel industry’s championing of fracking. Both sites, staffed by FTI writers, have pushed back against the #ExxonKnew campaign waged by environmental activists, which claims that the company knew about climate change for decades yet blocked action to confront it.

‘This is really fishy’

In spring 2018, Nell Minow noticed a tweet from a new group, one she had never heard of, seeming to support small investors. Ms. Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge, a firm that advises investors, and a longtime advocate for mom-and-pop investors, was excited.

“I thought, ‘Great, a shareholder group! I need to know about them,’” she said. “Then I started looking into them and thought, this is really fishy.”

Though the group, Main Street Investors,described itself as representing small investors, it was started by a number of industry organizations, including the National Association of Manufacturers. Main Street has criticized the ability of pension funds and other powerful investors to influence companies’ policies on matters like climate and the environment.

Working for the National Association of Manufacturers, FTI produced a study arguing that activist shareholders tend not to help shareholder value. The report’s five authors were employees of the consulting firm Compass Lexecon, a wholly owned FTI subsidiary. The Main Street Investors website is now offline.

FTI also worked with the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the industry group associated with Energy In Depth, to start DivestmentFacts.com,which warns that divesting from fossil fuels — a growing trend among university endowments and pension funds — could cost those institutions millions of dollars. At least six academic papers published on Divestmentfacts.com were by professors who, in addition to their university jobs, were also working for Compass Lexecon, the FTI subsidiary.

FTI monitored Ms. Minow after she publicly said Main Street Investorswas using “inflammatory language, unsupported assertions, and out-and-out falsehoods” to spread its message. Internal memos show FTI employees compiled reports on her background, noting, among other things, that she was once dubbed “the C.E.O. killer” by Fortune magazine for her record of ousting underperforming executives. FTI also tracked her tweets in a spreadsheet.

FTI’s Mr. Bashalany said that no attempt had been made to hide any of the report authors’ affiliation. He said neither FTI through itsCompass Lexecon subsidiary nor its clients “had any influence whatsoever over the form or direction” of the reports. FTI staff conducted “some basic biographic research” of Ms. Minow, he said, “but that’s it — we did nothing else.”

This month, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the oil and gas lobby group, announced it had launched a major initiative to support oil and gas companies looking into adopting environmental, social and governance strategies. In its announcement, the group stressed the importance of efforts that were “authentic and effective.”

Its partner in the endeavor is FTI.

the Feel-Good Folly of Fossil-Fuel Divestment

Fischel, Daniel R.

}::{Wall Street Journal:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:700;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 10 Feb 2015: A.11.

Global Divestment Day will kick off on Friday. In the run-up to this two-day event, college administrators will come under increasing pressure to accede to climate activists' demands and sell off the fossil-fuel-related equities in their endowments. Should they?

Any rational investor should make a clear-eyed comparison between the potential benefits and costs of a divestment strategy. A new study that I and my colleagues at Compass Lexecon are releasing on Tuesday indicates that fossil-fuel divestment could significantly harm an investment portfolio.

No single piece of financial advice is more widely accepted by academics and savvy investors than portfolio diversification to increase returns and manage risk. Divestment advocates typically assume that investors can exclude fossil-fuel stocks with little or no loss. One California-based investment manager, for example, was quoted in a recent Rolling Stone article as saying that divestment would have "very low impact. If you take the fossil-fuel companies out, you're still very well diversified."

Our research shows the opposite: Of the 10 major industry sectors in the U.S. equity markets, energy has the lowest correlation with all others -- which means it has the largest potential diversification benefit. The sector with the second-lowest correlation with others is utilities, which includes many fossil-fuel divestment targets such as Southern Company and Duke Energy.

How does divestment affect portfolio performance? To get at this question, we constructed a model to track the performance of two hypothetical investment portfolios over a 50-year period: one that included energy-related stocks, and another that did not. What we found is that the optimal portfolio, which included energy stocks, generated average returns 0.7 percentage points greater than portfolios that excluded them on an absolute basis. In other words, the "divested" portfolio lost roughly 70 basis points compared with the optimal one -- 70 basis points for each and every year over the 50-year period in which the portfolios were active.

A lower return is only one cost that institutions considering divestment should evaluate. Another is the costs associated with complying with such a policy, including the fees required to actively manage the portfolio to ensure it remains fossil-fuel free. The question of which companies have unacceptable "fossil fuel exposure" is not simple in most cases. For instance, what about an oil-and-gas company that also performs substantial "green" energy research? What about an automobile manufacturer? What about a bank that holds the debt of an oil-and-gas firm? What about index funds?

Precisely because these questions are hard, management fees charged by mutual funds with an environmental focus appear to be, on average, greater than those funds without such a focus. Our research indicates that the largest "green" funds have average expenses three times greater than those of the largest mutual funds that invest in energy firms. This may be why, in announcing their decision in November not to divest from fossil-fuel related stocks, the board of trustees at American University in Washington, D.C., indicated that divestment would "cause manager fees to double."

The potential for lower investment returns after divestment is real, and substantial. The National Association of College and University Business Officers (Nacubo) has estimated the assets in university endowments to be $456 billion. A 0.7% decrease in the collective portfolio performance of these endowments would decrease annual growth by nearly $3.2 billion annually. Nacubo has estimated $22 billion in university endowments are invested in energy stocks. An increase in compliance or management costs of 1% to maintain a fossil-fuel-free endowment would further decrease annual growth by an additional $220 million. A reduction in wealth of this magnitude could have a substantial impact on the ability of universities to achieve their goals, such as the research, services and scholarships that they offer.

What benefit would investors serve by incurring these losses? Divestment activists claim that fossil-fuel stocks are certain to decline as regulatory or consumer behavior changes. The problem here is that current stock prices already incorporate broad market expectations about the future of the industry -- expectations that include knowledge about possible political or consumer changes. In short, assertions about the future valuations of fossil-fuel (or any) companies are about as reliable as your Uncle Ernie's latest hot stock tip.

Can divestment make fossil-fuel-related companies change their ways? Even activists acknowledge that divestment is more about stigmatizing fossil-fuel companies and might not have a direct financial impact on them. On this point, at least, they're right. Over the long run, stock prices are primarily driven by fundamentals, not the decisions of particular investors to hold or sell.

Moreover, the vast majority of institutions currently attempting to implement fossil-fuel divestment policies hold a very small share of stock in the companies that are targets of the campaign. Divestment would have little or no effect on company share prices.

Every bit of economic and quantitative evidence available to us today shows that the only entities punished under a fossil-fuel divestment regime are the schools actually doing the divesting -- with virtually no discernible impact on the targeted companies. Students and universities may nevertheless wish to make a symbolic or political statement, but they should know it will come at a high price. Talk is cheap, but divestiture is not.

Mr. Fischel is chairman and president of Compass Lexecon, an economic consultancy firm, and emeritus professor at the University of Chicago Law School. The report discussed in this op-ed, "Fossil Fuel Divestment: A Costly and Ineffective Investment Strategy," wasfinanced by the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

(See related letters: "Letters to the Editor: Divesting Fossil Fuel: Some Pros and Cons" -- WSJ February 13, 2015)

quartz no lnx grfx

https://qz.com/2025377/inside-compass-lexecon-one-of-the-top-antitrust-consulting-firms/

...

The history of Compass Lexecon

1977: Consulting firm “Lexecon” is founded by University of Chicago law professor Richard Posner and two colleagues. Posner is one of the leading figures in the “Chicago School” of legal thought, which pushed American courts to consider antitrust cases narrowly, on the basis of the impact to consumer prices. “Lexecon” is a mashup of lex, the Latin word for law, and “econ.”

1978: Lexecon gets its first big break: AT&T hires Posner to consult on its defense in a federal antitrust lawsuit that ends in the court-ordered breakup of AT&T.

1981: US president Ronald Reagan appoints William Baxter, a prominent “Chicago School” law professor, as attorney general. He helps usher in a new era of antitrust enforcement. Business begins to boom for economic consultants who build models (for the prosecution or defense) that quantify the impact dominant companies have on consumer prices.

1998: Nextera Enterprises, a company owned by “junk bond king” Michael Milken, acquires Lexecon for $60 million.

2003: FTI Consulting acquires Lexecon for $130 million.

2006: FTI Consulting acquires another antitrust consultant firm, Competition Policy Associates, and merges it with Lexecon to form Compass Lexecon.

An army of antitrust consultants

FTI keeps growing the number of economic consultants in its eponymous division, which is dominated by Compass Lexecon.

Even so, US merger enforcement has remained relatively flat over the past decade: New presidential administrations tend to take it easy in year one, and ramp up by the end of each term.

How much it costs to hire Compass Lexecon

$599 million: Revenue generated by FTI’s economic consulting division in 2020

175: PhD-credentialed consultants employed by Compass Lexecon

2: Nobel prize winners working for Compass Lexecon (University of Chicago economist James Heckman and New York University economist Robert Engle)

$494: Average hourly fee for a Compass Lexecon consultant (though top experts charge as much as $1,350 per hour)

84: Fortune 100 companies that have hired Compass Lexecon

23: Compass Lexecon offices, in 14 countries

The small world of antitrust consultants

The industry of antitrust consultants is itself highly concentrated: About half a dozen firms control the lion’s share of the market for expert witnesses and economic reports in antitrust cases and merger reviews.

Charles River Associates: Often listed alongside Compass Lexecon as the world’s top antitrust consulting firm, CRA has a similar reach, operating 22 offices in 10 countries.

National Economic Research Associates: Founded in 1961, NERA is the oldest consulting firm that specializes in using economic models to support antitrust litigation.

Bates White: With one office in Washington DC, Bates White focuses primarily on US antitrust cases, but has an international network of consultants spread across the globe.

Analysis Group: This Boston-based firm has offices in North America, Europe, and Asia, and in the past year has represented firms like Qualcomm and GSK in antitrust cases.

Cornerstone Research: Based in San Francisco, Cornerstone most memorably consulted on the mega-merger between Sprint and T-Mobile.

Berkeley Research Group: The youngest entrant on the list, BRG was founded in 2010 but has quickly ballooned to 45 offices in 17 countries.

What it takes to be an economic consultant

“It’s a pretty rare skill set to be able to have both very good qualifications substantively in economics…and also to have the skills to sit in the stand and testify and explain it in plain English. Not everybody can do that. And the people that can do it can charge pretty good fees.” —Janelle Wrigley, former FTC prosecutor

It takes a particular person to become a $1,000-an-hour economic consultant. And it helps if you look and act the part of a pointy-headed, tweed-bound professor.

ProPublica describes Dennis Carlton, a University of Chicago economist and leading Compass Lexecon consultant—who has raked in about $100 million in fees over the course of his career—as being self-effacing, with small, bespectacled eyes, a habit of speaking in a slow, nasal voice, and an overall demeanor that’s about “as intimidating as a high school guidance counselor.” And yet, “his calm, unassuming demeanor, even under intense cross-examination, makes him the perfect champion for his corporate clients.”

wikifluff

compass Lexecon is a global economic consulting firm with headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. It provides analysis of economic issues for use in legal and regulatory proceedings, strategic decisions, and public policy debates.^[5][6] Compass Lexecon LLC was formed in January 2008 through the combination of Competition Policy Associates (COMPASS), founded in 2003, and Lexecon, founded in 1977, and operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of FTI Consulting, a global business advisory firm.^[7] Compass Lexecon has been ranked as one of the top competition economics firms worldwide.^[8][9]

Daniel Fischel is the chairman and president.^[10] Jonathan Orszag is senior managing director.^[11] In May 2013, Compass Lexecon acquired Princeton Economics Group, which provides economic research, data analysis and testimony to law firms and corporations.^[12] Compass Lexecon has 23 office locations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia.

Mentions

In July 2014, in response to an inquiry from the Federal Communications Commission, the National Association of Broadcasters cited a report by Compass Lexecon on the economic benefits of exclusivity rules.^[13] Compass Lexecon was also mentioned as one of the firms hired to evaluate the settlement accord offered by J.P. Morgan to investors of its mortgage-backed securities.^[14]

In February 2015, The New York Times covered a report written by Daniel Fischel, which examined the implications facing academic institutions that divest fossil fuel-related stocks.^[15][16] The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Fischel on the same topic.^[17]

In May 2015, Compass Lexecon was named Competition Economist Firm of the Year by Who's Who Legal. Additionally, Compass Lexecon's Janusz Ordover, a Senior Consultant, was named as the 2015 Competition Economist Individual Expert of the Year.^[18] In the same month, a Compass Lexecon report "claim[ed] the Gulf airlines are not creating new demand, but siphoning off passengers from existing airlines."^[19] In May 2019, Compass Lexecon was ranked first in GAR 100 Expert Witness Firms’ Power Index for the second consecutive year by Global Arbitration Review.^[20]

Practice areas

Compass Lexecon advertises expertise in the following practice areas:^[21]

Antitrust & Competition
Auctions
Damages
Derivatives & Structured Finance
ERISA Litigation
Energy, Healthcare
Intellectual Property
International Arbitration
Regulatory Investigations
Securities & Financial Markets
Telecommunications, Transportation
Valuation & Financial Analysis^[22]

Affiliates

Jean-Pierre Dubé^[23]
Jonathan F. Foster^[24]
David K.A. Mordecai^[25]
Glenn Woroch^[26]
Patrick Coen^[27]
Alexander Teytelboym^[27]
Alexandre De Cornière^[27]

References

^ "About Us". Compass Lexecon. Compass Lexecon. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
^ "About Us". Compass Lexecon. Compass Lexecon. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
^ "About Us". Compass Lexecon. Compass Lexecon. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
^ "Compass Lexecon LLC". www.bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
^ Bloomberg Businessweek, Company Overview of Compass Lexecon LLC. Retrieved on April 4, 2014.[1]
^ The Wall Street Journal, "FTI Consulting Wins Four 2014 Global Competition Review Awards". April 9, 2014.[2]
^ Compass Lexecon, About Us
^ "Winners – Consulting Experts & Firms". whoswholegal. Who's Who Legal. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
^ "Compass Lexecon Named Competition Economics Firm of the Year 2018". Compass Lexecon. Compass Lexecon. 4 June 2018. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
^ Compass Lexecon Bio, Daniel Fischel
^ Compass Lexecon Bio, Jonathan Orszag & [3]
^ The New York Times, News About FTI Consulting Inc
^ Broadcasting and Cable, "NAB: Exclusivity Rules Are Crucial". July 24, 2014. Retrieved on October 10, 2014.[4]
^ Bloomberg, "JPMorgan Seen Facing Bigger Fight With Mortgage Investors". July 24, 2014.[5]
^ The New York Times, “Study Claims Oil Divestiture May Hurt College Endowments”. February 9, 2015.[[6]](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/business/energy-environment/study-claims-oil-divestiture-may-hurt-college-endowments.html?ref=education&_r=1)
^ Daniel Fischel, “Fossil Fuel Divestment: A Costly and Ineffective Investment Strategy”.[7]
^ The Wall Street Journal, “The Feel-Good Folly of Fossil-Fuel Divestment”. February 9, 2015.[8]
^ CNN Money, "FTI Consulting and Compass Lexecon Honored as Arbitration Expert Firm and Competition Economist Firm of the Year at the 2015 Who's Who Legal Awards". May 4, 2015. [9] Archived 2015-05-18 at the Wayback Machine
^ THOMASELLI, RICH (May 15, 2015). "Open Skies Combatants Continue to Take Shots". TravelPulse.
^ Nasdaq, "Compass Lexecon and FTI Consulting Lead Global Arbitration Review’s Expert Witness Firms’ Power Index". May 28, 2019. [10]
^ "Practice Areas". Compass Lexecon. Retrieved 2021-09-24.
^ The Washington Post, "Economists wield big influence in merger reviews". June 1, 2014.[11]
^ "Renowned Quantitative Marketing Expert Professor Jean-Pierre Dubé Affiliates with Compass Lexecon". Compass Lexecon. 2022-02-21. Retrieved 2022-03-01.
^ "Jonathan F. Foster, Leading M&A Process Expert, Affiliates with Compass Lexecon". Compass Lexecon. 2022-02-17. Retrieved 2022-03-01.
^ "Renowned Economist, Dr. David K.A. Mordecai, Reaffiliates with Compass Lexecon". Compass Lexecon. 2022-01-03. Retrieved 2022-03-01.
^ "FCC Chief Economist Glenn Woroch Rejoins Compass Lexecon". Compass Lexecon. 2021-11-03. Retrieved 2022-03-01.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Lexecon#cite_ref-:0_27-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Lexecon#cite_ref-:0_27-2) "Leading Academic Economists in Europe Affiliate with Compass Lexecon". Compass Lexecon. 2021-07-26. Retrieved 2022-03-01.

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aniel R. Fischel (born December 10, 1950) is the emeritus Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law and Business and former Dean of University of Chicago Law School. He co-founded Lexecon, and is now chairman and president of Compass Lexecon.

Early life and education

Fischel was born in New York City. He graduated from Cornell University in 1972, and received a Master of Arts in American history from Brown University in 1974. Fischel received his Juris Doctor cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School in 1977, where he was comment editor of the law review and elected to the Order of the Coif.

Career

After graduation, Fischel clerked for Judge Thomas E. Fairchild of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States. He taught at Northwestern University Law School from 1980 to 1983, the last year of which he was a visiting professor at his alma mater.^[1] Fischel joined the University of Chicago Law faculty in 1984, and served as dean from 1998 to 2001, when he resigned due his marriage to another university employee and the university's anti-nepotism policy.^[2] During his time as dean, he famously tried to convinceBarack Obama that his political career was finished following his resounding defeat to Bobby Rushfor U.S. Congress.^[3] He also drew controversy in 2009 for his purchase of a condominium in New York for over $8 million,^[4] which he sold for nearly $12 million in 2012.^[5]

As an expert witness, Fischel testified on behalf of Charles Keating,^[6] Ken Lay, and Jeffrey Skilling.^[7] His work concerning the collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan upset plaintiffs' law firm Milberg Weiss, leading Fischel and Lexecon to file a defamation and abuse of process suit, which led to a Supreme Court decision about multi-district litigation (Lexecon Inc. v. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, 523 U.S. 26 (1998)) and a $50 million settlement paid to him and/or his firm.^[8]

A panel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of Joseph Nacchio over alleged insider trading of Qwest because Judge Edward Nottingham would not let Fischel testify on Nacchio's behalf.^[9] but the entire Circuit en banc reversed the reversal^[10] and Nacchio ultimately served jail time (being released in 2013).

Fischel co-authored with Frank Easterbrook The Economic Structure of Corporate Law (Harvard University Press, 1991). His book, "Payback", argued that the prosecution of Michael Milken was unjust.^[11]

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Contents

Early life and education

Career

See also

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