Mark counsels food and agribusiness clients on antitrust and competition issues, helping them mitigate risk in an increasingly complex business and regulatory environment.
Mark brings more than three decades of experience to complex antitrust matters, with deep insight as to how the government analyzes acquisitions, joint ventures, exclusionary practices and trade association activities at both the state and federal level. Clients trust Mark’s decade of experience at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Antitrust Division, as a senior policymaker and litigator helping to guide State Attorneys General relations, agriculture enforcement and public advocacy, and his work leading enforcement efforts across all industries at the Texas Attorney General’s Antitrust Division. Drawing on knowledge gleaned from the year-long series of agricultural competition workshops he helped organize at DOJ, Mark has worked with agricultural producers and processors regarding regulation and rulemaking for cattle, poultry and dairy as well as chemicals, seeds and agricultural biotechnology. He also has significant antitrust experience in the healthcare, financial services and technology industries.
Mark's experience includes:
- Leading an interdisciplinary team assisting a food systems processing client in developing a comprehensive regulatory risk assessment spanning antitrust, Packers and Stockyards, Robinson-Patman, and state farming and animal confinement law compliance risks;
- Assisting a branded food product manufacturer in navigating state price gouging laws in two states that prevented price increases during the lengthy pendency of the Covid emergency;
- Assisting two different consumer and animal food product manufacturers in assessing Robinson-Patman Act compliance issues arising out of recent company acquisitions;
- Assisting several Texas wholesale and retail grocery clients in responding to state consumer protection investigative subpoenas concerning the “cost-plus” method of retail grocery pricing.
Clients and legal teams also value Mark’s many years of developing and shaping a broad network of productive relationships at all levels of industry and government, including regional and national agricultural cooperative and advocacy groups, agriculture industry executives, think tanks and academics, as well as a bipartisan array of state and federal legislators, enforcers and regulators, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the State Attorneys General.
As one of the foremost practitioners of agricultural antitrust law, Mark has written articles, spoken at conferences (including the AALA and ABA), and given webinars on new government efforts to regulate anticompetitive mergers and conduct and to stimulate new competition in agricultural processing markets.