Russell M. Steinthal
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Russell Steinthal has experience with the full range of the group’s practice, including litigation, merger-related work and corporate counseling. Russell routinely counsels clients on a wide variety of antitrust issues, ranging from cutting-edge issues at the interplay of antitrust and patent law to the intricacies of the Hart-Scott-Rodino pre-merger notification rules. In addition, he has been a lead antitrust attorney on numerous major transactions, including the $67 billion merger of AT&T and BellSouth, A&P’s $679 million acquisition of Pathmark, Ball Corporation’s $577 million acquisition of beverage can manufacturing plants from ABI/InBev, Bemis’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Alcan Packaging Food Americas and Google’s $700 million acquisition of ITA Software and its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.  

Russell was also the lead associate on the Axinn team that spent more than a year intensively counseling MasterCard’s board of directors in the lead-up to its 2006 IPO. The IPO transformed MasterCard from a membership association of banks into a publicly-traded company and marked an important milestone in the credit card industry, which had faced a wave of antitrust challenges to its prior structure.

Russell is a member of the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association and the New York City Bar Association. As a member of the latter’s Antitrust and Trade Regulation Committee, he has spoken on well-received panels on both SEP enforcement and the antitrust issues posed by patent assertion entities.

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Experience

Mergers & Acquisitions 

  • Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility
  • Google’s $700 million acquisition of ITA Software
  • Bemis’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Alcan Packaging Food Americas
  • Ball Corporation’s $577 million of beverage can manufacturing plants from ABI/InBev
  • A&P’s $679 million acquisition of Pathmark
  • The $57 billion merger of AT&T and BellSouth
  • The 2004 sale of Candle Corporation to IBM 

Investigations and Litigation 

  • Represented Google and Motorola Mobility in the FTC’s investigation of the latter’s standard-essential patent licensing
  • Represented Matlin Patterson and Vantico in a private Section 7 challenge to a hostile takeover of Vantico, brought in the Southern District of New York, as well as in a related FTC investigation
  • Represent Rapid Aid, a Canadian manufacturer of hot/cold therapy products, in a Section 2 case brought against it in the District of Maryland

Counseling 

  • Antitrust counsel to MasterCard’s Board of Directors in connection with MasterCard’s reorganization and $2.4 billion IPO
  • Counsel to Stanley Black & Decker on Made-in-USA compliance issues
  • Counsel to multiple clients on Hart-Scott-Rodino pre-merger notification issues

Honors

  • Chambers USA (2015 – 2016)
  • Super Lawyers, Rising Stars (2013 – 2017)
  • Who’s Who Legal: Competition Future Leaders (2023)

News

Education

  • JD – Columbia Law School (2002) Honors: Stone Scholar; Public Service Fellow (2000); Semi-finalist, Harlan Fiske Stone Moot Court Competition (2001, 2002). Production Editor, Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts (2001-2002).
  • BA, cum laude – Columbia College (1999) Honors: Departmental Honors in Computer Science.

Admissions

  • New York
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
  • U.S. District Court Southern District of New York
  • U.S. District Court Eastern District of New York
  • U.S. District Court Northern District of New York
  • U.S. District Court District of Columbia

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