Kevin O’Connor

Kevin O’Connor is chair of the Antitrust and Trade Regulation Practice Group at Godfrey & Kahn and has offices in both Madison and Milwaukee. He has more than 20 years of experience in antitrust, trade regulation, and consumer litigation and counseling. Before joining Godfrey & Kahn, he served as the assistant attorney general in charge of antitrust enforcement and head of the Office of Consumer Protection and Antitrust in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. During his tenure in government, O’Connor chaired the National Association of Attorneys General’s (NAAG) Multistate Antitrust Task Force. He led multistate working groups litigating cases involving resale price maintenance, insurance boycotts, mergers, price-fixing, complex indirect purchaser litigation and exclusionary practices. He was also lead state counsel in the case brought by 19 states and the US-DOJ against Microsoft. He has also litigated criminal bid-rigging cases in state court. His experience encompasses industries as diverse as health care, high technology and intellectual property, vitamins, electric utilities, cattle dealers, retail distribution, telecommunications and many others. Applying his extensive experience and doctorate in economics, O’Connor co-authored the Horizontal Merger Guidelines (1993) and the Vertical Restraints Guidelines (1994) of the National Association of Attorneys General. In addition, for over a decade, he has worked closely with his counterparts in the federal antitrust enforcement agencies on both merger and non-merger matters. In particular, he developed the Protocol for Coordination in Merger Investigations Between the Federal Enforcement Agencies and State Attorneys General, adopted by the States, the FTC and US-DOJ in 1998 which governs federal and state investigations of mergers and acquisitions.