Eleanor Fox, Walter J. Derenberg Professor of Trade Regulation, was honored last month for being one of the founders of the International Competition Network (ICN), a forum for antitrust enforcers from around the world to meet and exchange information. She and two others, James Rill, a partner at Baker Botts, and Merit Janow, incoming dean at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, were recognized for their founding role at ICN’s 12th annual conference in Warsaw. Fox offered this background on ICN, and the role she and her co-founders played in forming it:
Rill, Janow and I were on the US Department of Justice’s International Competition Policy Advisory Committee (ICPAC), which was formed in 1997 and had 12 members. In 2000 we submitted our report proposing the formation of an international network of competition authorities wherein officials from developed and developing countries would work informally, sharing knowledge and expertise and working towards convergence of antitrust laws and procedures and understanding of divergences. The idea was backed by Joel Klein, then Assistant Attorney General in Charge of Antitrust in the US Department of Justice, and adopted by, at first, 14 nations’ competition authorities.
ICN is now one of the most successful networks in the world for convergence and informed divergence of national laws in specific areas. It is exemplary as a mode of global governance, for it effectively links more than 120 different national competition laws, many of which simultaneously apply to the same cross-border transactions and conduct of transnational dimensions
In a letter to Fox, Eduardo Pérez Motta, chair of ICN's steering group and president of Mexico’s Federal Competition Commission, wrote: “Thank you for setting the first stone in what has become a successful network of 127 members and over 500 [non-government advisors]. It is amazing what we have achieved these 12 years, and this would never have been possible without the outstanding support of individuals like you, who have been instrumental in the creation and development of the ICN.”
Posted on May 22, 2013