Joshua Soven

Joshua H. Soven is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where his practice focuses on government antitrust investigations, antitrust litigation, and counseling on competition issues. He represents leading public and private companies before the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and in the federal courts.

His clients include companies across a diverse range of sectors, including the technology, financial services, payment card, healthcare, life sciences, retail, and energy industries. Josh is currently representing Deutsche Telekom in connection with T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint Corporation. He is also presently defending BNSF Railway Company in a series of putative antitrust class actions.

Since entering private practice in 2012, Josh has obtained timely approval of complex, strategic transactions for a range of prominent companies, including AECOM, Ameristar, Francisco Partners, Hewlett-Packard, LinkedIn, Marriott, Matson, Norbord, Northwell Health, The Southern Company, St. Jude Medical, and Tenet Healthcare.

Previously, Josh served in several leadership and trial counsel roles at both U.S. antitrust agencies. From 2007 to 2012, Josh was Chief of the Litigation I Section of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, where he directed all of the division’s investigations, litigation challenges, and settlement negotiations in the health insurance, consumer products, packaging, beer, and dairy sectors, including the successful litigation challenge in United States v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.

He also handled the investigation of and negotiation of divestiture agreements for the following transactions: International Paper/Temple-Inland; Graphic Packaging/Altivity Packaging; UnitedHealth Group/Sierra Health Services; InBev/Anheuser-Busch; and Grupo Bimbo/Sara Lee.

In addition, Josh served as a trial attorney in the division’s Networks & Technology Enforcement Section, where he directed investigations in the software, electronic payment systems, and financial services fields, including the department’s successful litigation challenge to the First Data/Concord merger, United States v. First Data (DDC).

From 2004 to 2007, Josh was an Attorney Advisor to FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras, advising her on antitrust enforcement and policy matters. Earlier in his career, he was a special assistant in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Virginia.

Josh is currently an editor of the American Bar Association’s (ABA’s) Antitrust Magazine, and he is a former editor of the ABA’s Antitrust Law Journal. He has spoken at many conferences on antitrust enforcement issues and served as a lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he co-taught a course on strategy and competition policy in the healthcare sector.

EDUCATION:

• J.D., University of Virginia School of Law, 1991
• B.A., Economics and History, University of Pennsylvania, 1988

ADMISSIONS:

• Bar of the District of Columbia