FTC Chairman Announces New International Affairs Office

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras has created the FTC’s Office of International Affairs to coordinate more effectively the full range of the FTC’s international activities. The move brings international antitrust, consumer protection, and technical assistance programs under one office.

“Competition and consumer protection are complements, and both have gone global,” Chairman Majoras said. “The FTC’s new Office of International Affairs will more effectively support our investigations and litigation, coordinate with our international counterparts, and strengthen our efforts to promote competition and stop consumer fraud that crosses international borders.” She noted that communications technology has led consumer protection agencies around the world to work together to fight spam, spyware, and data security problems, and fraudulent, foreign-based telemarketers who target U.S. consumers, just as globalization has led competition agencies to cooperate in challenging anticompetitive conduct that is not confined to one jurisdiction.

The Office of International Affairs will integrate the international functions of the FTC’s Consumer Protection and Competition bureaus and the technical assistance program of its Office of the General Counsel (OGC).

“Combining these functions will enable us to leverage the talents, experience, and expertise of our superb staff in all three areas to advance more effectively our consumer protection and competition missions, and to promote our policy agenda,” Majoras said.

Chairman Majoras also announced the appointment of Randy Tritell as Director of the Office of International Affairs. Tritell, who has served with distinction in various positions in both bureaus and in former Commissioner Terry Calvani’s Office, has led the FTC’s International Antitrust Division since 1998, playing a major role in upholding the Commission’s high standing in the international antitrust community.

Mr. Tritell was formerly a partner with Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, opening its Brussels, Belgium, office in 1992 to practice European Community and international competition

law. He began his career at the FTC, serving as a staff attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP), Assistant to the Director of the bureau, Attorney Advisor to Commissioner Calvani, and Executive Assistant to the Chairman. Tritell, who received the FTC Chairman's award in 2005, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Joining Tritell in the Office of International Affairs are Hugh Stevenson, Deputy Director for International Consumer Protection, who as BCP's Associate Director for International Consumer Protection coordinated FTC work on the recently passed U.S. SAFE WEB Act on international cooperation, and who recently completed a Harvard Law School fellowship focusing on international privacy law; Elizabeth Kraus, Deputy Director for International Antitrust, who was formerly Counsel to the Director of the Bureau of Competition (BC) and Counsel for Multilateral Affairs in BC’s International Antitrust Division, and had worked for Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLC in Brussels; and James Hamill, Deputy Director for International Technical Assistance, who was formerly OGC’s Senior Counsel for International Affairs.

Also serving as part of the office’s management team are Stacy Feuer, Assistant Director for International Consumer Protection, who was formerly a partner in Baach Robinson & Lewis, where she specialized in international commercial fraud litigation; and Russell Damtoft, Associate Director of the Office, who was formerly Counsel for Inter-American Affairs and for International Technical Assistance in BC's International Antitrust Division, Assistant Regional Director of the FTC’s Midwest Region Office, a resident advisor in Romania and Lithuania in the FTC's technical assistance program, and Assistant to the Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection.