Competition Director Susan Creighton to Leave FTC

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras today announced that Susan Creighton, director of the Bureau of Competition for the past two-and-a-half years, will leave the FTC. The Chairman also announced that Jeffrey Schmidt, currently a deputy director in the Bureau, has been named director.

“I thank Susan for her tremendous service to American consumers through her leadership of our competition mission. She is a brilliant lawyer and a trusted colleague,” said Chairman Majoras. “We are fortunate that Jeff will take over as Bureau Director. He is a highly talented and dedicated lawyer who has earned an outstanding reputation within the Commission and in the legal community. I look forward to working with him in this new role.”

Creighton joined the Commission in August 2001 as deputy bureau director, and was named director in July 2003. During her tenure, she supervised the Bureau’s non-merger and merger enforcement divisions; played a key role in developing antitrust policy; secured important changes in the Bureau’s infrastructure and processes, including the establishment of a litigation office; and managed Bureau resources during a time when the administrative case docket was greatly expanded.

In the merger area, Creighton helped lead the FTC in gaining favorable decisions and relief for consumers in cases including Libbey/Newell Rubbermaid, Inc.; Blockbuster Inc.; Chevron/Unocal; Aspen Technology/Hyprotech; Procter & Gamble/Gillette; and Johnson & Johnson/Guidant. She also directed efforts in challenging consummated mergers, including the Commission’s litigation in Chicago Bridge and Iron Company N.V. and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare/Highland Park Hospital.

In the non-merger arena, Creighton played a critical role in obtaining the consent orders in the pharmaceutical “Orange Book” matters, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb and Biovail, in the administrative litigation and subsequent appeal of Schering-Plough Corp., in the litigation and subsequent settlement in Unocal, and in cases such as Unocal and South Carolina State Board of Dentistry.

Schmidt began his career at Pillsbury Winthrop, where he was an associate, partner, and a managing partner of the Washington office, focusing his practice on antitrust litigation and intellectual property issues. In 2001, he assumed the position of Chief Legal Officer and Chief Administrative Officer at Transora, an electronic data synchronization firm formed by leading consumer packaged goods manufacturers, before returning to Pillsbury in 2003. Schmidt has served as a deputy director of the Bureau of Competition since February 2005.

Schmidt holds a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law, where he was awarded Order of the Coif and served as an editor of the Hastings Law Journal. He received a B.A. degree with honors from the University of California at Berkeley. A member of the District of Columbia Bar, the State Bar of California, and the American Bar Association, he previously served as an attorney advisor to FTC Commissioner Terry Calvani.

Information about the Federal Trade Commission is available from the FTC’s Web site at http://www.ftc.gov and also from the FTC’s Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish (bilingual counselors are available to take complaints), or to get free information on any of 150 consumer topics, call toll-free, 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357), or use the complaint form at http://www.ftc.gov. The FTC enters Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.