Michelle Meagher | |
|---|---|
 Michelle Meagher in 2018 | |
| Education | Oxford University, Georgetown University |
| Occupation(s) | competition lawyer, campaigner |
| Website | michellemeagher |
Michelle Meagher is a British lawyer, author and campaigner. [1] Meagher is advocating for an overhaul of competition policy away from the Chicago School antitrust consumer-centered paradigm. [2]
Meagher was born in the UK. She is British of Bangladeshi origin. Her parents wanted her to become a medical doctor. [3] Meagher chose instead to study Philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University and competition law at Georgetown University. [4]
After her studies she worked as competition lawyer for Magic Circle law firms. [5]
In 2013, Meagher was emotionally affected by the Rana Plaza tragedy, [6] in which an eight-story commercial building collapsed in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, killing over 1,100 people, principally garment factories workers. Meagher's maternal family came from Dhanmondi area of Dhaka, situated close to the district where Rana Plaza was once located and Meagher identified with the victims of the tragedy. [3]
As an M&A lawyer facilitating mergers between large companies, Meagher was confronted with a crisis of consciousness. [7] She saw irresponsible corporate governance structures resulting from unfettered competition for profits as the ultimate reason behind the Rana Plaza tragedy. Consequently, Meagher quit her job with a renowned multinational law firm. [8]
In 2020, Meagher published the book Competition is Killing Us, in which she argues for a redesign of competition law to control the power of Big Tech. [9]
Meagher repeatedly called out the concentration of corporate power. She called for more regulatory intervention to rebalance the interests of shareholders with the interests of citizens, [10] such as mandatory sharing of anonymized data by Big Tech companies with their smaller competitors. [11]
In 2021, Meagher co-founded the European anti-monopoly organisation Balanced Economy Project, with the journalist Nicholas Shaxson. [12]
Meagher is a senior policy fellow at the Centre for Law, Economics and Society, University College London (UCL). She a co-founder of the think tank Inclusive Competition Forum. [9]
Meagher's contribution to the anti-monopoly movement has been likened to Lina Khan in the US, among other antitrust legal scholars. [13]
Shareholder primacy is one myth of free markets that Meagher discussed in her work. [14] She suggested to revisit the rules of corporate governance to ensure a greater alignment of companies' behavior with broader society goals and with environmental sustainability requirements. [15]
In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that regulate the conduct and organization of businesses in order to promote competition and prevent unjustified monopolies. The three main U.S. antitrust statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. These acts serve three major functions. First, Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels, and prohibits other collusive practices that unreasonably restrain trade. Second, Section 7 of the Clayton Act restricts the mergers and acquisitions of organizations that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. Third, Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits monopolization.
Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust law, anti-monopoly law, and trade practices law; the act of pushing for antitrust measures or attacking monopolistic companies is commonly known as trust busting.
Margrethe Vestager is a Danish politician currently serving as Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age since December 2019 and European Commissioner for Competition since 2014. Vestager is a member of the Danish Social Liberal Party, and of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE) on the European level.
TimothyShiou-Ming Wu is a Taiwanese-American legal scholar who served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy at the United States from 2021 to 2023. He is also a professor of law at Columbia University and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is known legally and academically for significant contributions to antitrust and communications policy, coining the phrase "network neutrality" in his 2003 law journal article, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination. In the late 2010s, Wu was a leading advocate for an antitrust lawsuit directed at the breakup of Facebook.
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Original meaning of the word Monopoly comes from Greek as a compound of two words “mono,” which means “single” or “one,” and “polein“, meaning “ to sell.“ This word was perceived as an exclusive legal right of sale covered by Government usually ensured by patent or licence. In the seventeenth century monopoly was defined by sir Edward Coke as “allowance by the King to any person or corporate for the sole buying, selling, making, working or using anything, whereby any person or corporate are sought to be restrained of any freedom or liberty that they had before.” In the eighteenth century was developed another definition by Samuel Johnson as “exclusive privilege of selling anything.” In the course of time has monopoly become interpreted as a private accumulation of economic power or an entity that has total or near-total control of a market.
Joshua Daniel Wright is an American economist, attorney, and former government official. Wright served as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 2013 to 2015. At the time of his nomination, Wright was the fourth economist to serve as an FTC commissioner. Wright was a professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School between 2004 and 2023, and was the executive director of its Global Antitrust Institute (GAI). In 2023, Wright resigned from George Mason following eight allegations of sexual misconduct from former students.
Maureen Brunt was an Australian economist and academic who specialised in the field of competition law. She was Emeritus professor of Economics at Monash University.
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Fiona M. Scott Morton is an American economist who serves as the Theodore Nierenberg Professor at Yale School of Management. Her research in industrial organization has covered industries including magazines, shipping, pharmaceuticals, and internet retail. She served as associate dean of the Yale School of Management from 2007 to 2010.
Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants or Tech Titans, are the largest IT companies in the world. The concept of Big Tech is similar to the grouping of dominant companies in other sectors. It typically refers to the Big Five United States tech companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft; or the Magnificent Seven, which includes Nvidia and Tesla. Big Tech can also include Chinese companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi (BATX).
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The New Brandeis or neo-Brandeis movement is an antitrust academic and political movement in the United States which argues that excessively centralized private power is dangerous for economical, political and social reasons. Initially called hipster antitrust by its detractors, as also referred to as the "Columbia school" or "Neo-Progressive antitrust," the movement advocates that United States antitrust law return to a broader concern with private power and its negative effects on market competition, income inequality, consumer rights, unemployment, and wage growth.
Jonathan Seth Kanter is an American antitrust attorney who has served as assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division since November 16, 2021. Prior to this, Kanter worked as an antitrust attorney at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and in private practice.
In the context of U.S. competition law, the consumer welfare standard (CWS) or consumer welfare principle (CWP) is a legal doctrine used to determine the applicability of antitrust enforcement.
United States v. Google LLC is an ongoing federal antitrust case brought by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against Google LLC on October 20, 2020. The suit alleges that Google has violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by illegally monopolizing the search engine and search advertising markets, most notably on Android devices, as well as with Apple and mobile carriers.
Executive Order 14036, titled Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy and sometimes referred to as the Executive Order on Competition, is the fifty-first executive order signed by U.S. President Joe Biden. Signed on July 9, 2021, the order serves to establish a "whole-of-government effort to promote competition in the American economy" by encouraging stronger enforcement of antitrust law.
United States v. Google LLC is an ongoing federal antitrust case brought by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against Google LLC on January 24, 2023. The suit accuses Google of illegally monopolizing the advertising technology (adtech) market in violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The suit is separate from an ongoing DOJ antitrust case launched in 2020, which accuses Google of illegally monopolizing the search engine market.