WASHINGTON -- While the rest of Washington slumbers, lawyers and economists at the Federal Trade Commission are working non-stop to keep up with the unremitting pace of corporate mergers.
There is no overtime. Nor are there billable hours or stock options for the lawyers.
FTC and Justice Department antitrust division lawyers and economists are buried under an avalanche of corporate mergers that have broken records year after year. This year alone, mergers are up 30 percent, with no end in sight.
The agencies are also enforcing laws against companies they believe have misused market power to extend monopolies, discouraging innovation. That's why the FTC sued Intel and the Justice Department sued Microsoft.
For lawyers and economists at the agencies, six- and seven-day work weeks are a lifestyle for many. "My last day off was the Saturday before Memorial Day," said one staff attorney who works on mergers. "Well, actually I took a half-day off on Sunday."
Those at the top are grateful.
"They deserve an awful lot of credit," Federal Trade Commission Chairman Robert Pitofsky said in an interview. "It's one thing to work hard on a particular case, and lawyers do that all the time. It's another thing to work six or seven days a week, month in and month out, and year in and year out."
The mergers involve some of the biggest companies in the United States and abroad, including Boeing, AT&T, Citibank, Bell Atlantic, SBC, and Lockheed.
"No one here has seen anything like it in our lifetime," Pitofsky said. "You have to go back to the end of the 19th century to find a merger wave that's quite like this."
Mergers this year alone could reach 4,500. But it's not only the mergers that have created the additional work. New antitrust theories have complicated the approval process.
Thirty years ago, trustbusters just said "no" to most mergers of competitors. A change in antitrust philosophy now lets some competitors combine, but the price is a thorough and time-consuming review.
Even so, 96 percent of mergers get a quick green light. After close scrutiny of the remainder, only 2 percent of all proposed mergers are challenged.
The lawyers and economists say they love their jobs, but shoulder more work than they bargained for.
"You expect you'll have a little more time, you'll be able to see your family and friends," said Tara Isa Koslov, who joined the FTC in February, 1997. "But if you want to do the job well and be a good antitrust lawyer for the government, there is no way you can do the job 9 to 5."
She added: "No one pays your cab or your meals when you're staying late as they do at private firms."
And then there is the pay. One lawyer took a cut from US$81,000 to $67,000 despite carrying college and law school loan payments of $1,400 a month. Others have taken even bigger cuts.
That sometimes makes it tough to recruit new lawyers from private firms. But the agencies are striving to recover from the 1980s, when the Reagan administration was permissive on mergers and slashed staff.
The Justice Department's antitrust unit had 992 people in 1980 and has 811 today, while the FTC Bureau of Competition had an estimated 840 people in 1979 and has 458 today.
The Justice Department antitrust division's criminal actions have actually been a profit center for the government.
They have targeted companies that collude to eliminate competition and paralyze the free market by fixing prices or allocating territories. Fines against big companies here and abroad that fix US prices generated $240 million during the first seven months of this fiscal year.
Gary Spratling, a career civil servant who heads antitrust criminal enforcement, oversees lawyers working before 110 active grand juries, about a quarter looking into international cartels. That has him working the six- and seven-day weeks.
But Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein, who heads the division, assured Congress last week that the heavy work load will not deter the government from doing its job.
"We will do the analysis we need to do," he told the House Judiciary Committee.
