Irish-American merges business and heritage in competition post

An interest in European merger law and his Irish heritage attracted Boston lawyer Ted Henneberry to a Competition Authority post, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor

"All my grandparents are from Ireland and I grew up in Boston. That's what's nice about this position. It is a nice tie-in with my heritage." Edward 'Ted' Henneberry has long felt a draw to Ireland, so when the opportunity came to serve on the Competition Authority in Dublin, he says he saw it as a chance "to connect with my Irishness".

The 58-year-old American-born litigator is not an unknown quantity in Ireland.

Mr Henneberry has many Irish friends, including Mr Dermot Gallagher, who was Ireland's ambassador to Washington in the early 1990s.

He is one of the organisers of the annual American Ireland Fund dinner in Washington which, in recent years, has become a St Patrick's week must for leading political figures from north and south of the Border.

The statutory body that Mr Henneberry is joining was created to combat anti-competitive behaviour in Ireland, which occurs when firms agree to fix prices, limit output, divide business between them or abuse their market power, with no benefits to consumers.

As a member of the Competition Authority, Mr Henneberry will be part of a body with enforcement powers "to act promptly and rigorously to protect the interests of Irish consumers and overall economic welfare".

The Competition Act sets out the basic competition rules, gives the Competition Authority the power to investigate breaches of the law and, where necessary, to bring civil and criminal prosecutions.

It was set up in 1991 and is based in Parnell Square in Dublin with a staff of 33. It has five members and Dr John Fingleton is full-time chairman.

Ted Henneberry's appointment as director of the mergers division was announced last week as part of the authority's new responsibility to review mergers of companies under the Competition Act 2002.

"I have 30 years' experience in the field in the United States and Europe," Mr Henneberry told me, and "in the last 10 to 12 years, I have done a lot of work in the mergers area".

What encouraged him to apply, he said, was the prospect of being involved in changes in developing European merger and acquisitions law.

"In the Competition Authority in Ireland I will have the mergers portfolio," he said.

"One of the key attractions of the Irish Competition Authority under John Fingleton is that it is very active and is quite a major player in helping formulate policy on mergers and other competition issues in the European community.

"As an example, the Irish have adopted a particular merger standard which is really close to the US standard and it has been a big player in the debate on proposed changes in the merger regulations in the European community.

"There has been an ongoing debate among all the various national competition authorities.

"Last year, there were some substantive lawsuits which have led to a new reorganisation of that part of the European community that's responsible for mergers" involving planning, new investigative tools and economic analysis.

"The Irish authority has been a very large part of that. Why is that? It was explained to me that it was part of its open economic policy. They do believe that the competition policy is very supportive of the overall economic policy so the two work hand in hand, I guess."

In appointing Mr Henneberry to the Competition Authority, the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, has reached across the Atlantic to recruit one of the most experienced antitrust experts in corporate America.

The Washington-based lawyer started out on the regulatory side and has had a long career as a partner in Howrey Simon Arnold & White, the prestigious American law firm whose antitrust, global litigation and intellectual property practices are among the largest in the world.

Since 1975 he has been the firm's counsel to HJ Heinz, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based food giant.

He has had experience both prosecuting and defending companies in antitrust cases.

Mr Henneberry represented Heinz when it was charged with price-fixing in Rome three years ago. He went to Italy to assist the company after it was targeted by the Italian Competition Authority for operating a baby-food cartel.

The Italian body found Heinz Italia (formerly Plada), Nestlé, Milupa, Nutricia, Humana and Abbott guilty of anti-competitive behaviour, in that they colluded to charge Italian consumers considerably higher prices than the same companies charged consumers in other European countries. A heavy fine was imposed.

In 2001, also representing Heinz, Mr Henneberry lost a case in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia when it stopped the company from buying Beech-Nut Nutrition and creating a duopoly (with Gerber Products) for baby food sold in cans and jars.

Shortly afterwards Mr Henneberry acted for the National Association of Broadcasters when it opposed the merger of EchoStar Communications and DirecTV on the grounds that it would create a monopoly for the satellite television market and be less inclined to offer customers local broadcast stations.

In that case he actually cited the legal precedent set in the Heinz-Beechnut case that he had lost.

"There were a lot of smiles around the office," said Mr Henneberry, according to a contemporary report in the Washington Post-Newsweek Business Information.

"Are you really putting that in?" his colleagues asked, to which he replied: "'Well, that's the law'. But, I can honestly tell you, it hurt putting that footnote in. It really hurt."

More recently, Mr Henneberry was one of a team from his law firm that got US Department of Agriculture approval for a $3.5 billion purchase of Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation by Univision.

This deal merged the number one Spanish-language television provider in the US with the leading Spanish-language radio company, which critics said would create an Hispanic-language giant that could jack up ad rates for Spanish-language advertisers.

Mr Henneberry, who holds both Irish and American passports, will move full time to Ireland with his artist wife Kathryn to take up the five-year post in September.