Welcome back to Emlex's weekly podcast covering the big picture regulatory issues from around the world.

My name is James Panicki, and it's great to be with you again.

This week, we're taking a break from the daily grind of developing stories to look at a broader

issue that's reverberating in the US and that is the representation or rather the under

representation of African Americans in the two federal departments that deal with antitrust matters.

According to a report by our colleague Curtis Hekelberger, only 2.85% of the lawyers in the Department of Justice's

antitrust division are African American, and only 4.1% of the lawyers at the Federal Trade

Commission's Bureau of Competition are indeed

African-American.

Now, that under-representation is significant, and it's one that has sparked some discussion

in the antitrust community in Washington, D.C., in the wake of Curtis's story.

We've published that story on the Mlex website at the usual

address, MlexmarketingSight.com, but Curtis Heiklberger, in fact, wrote the piece for our sister

publication FTC Watch. Curtis covers mergers and acquisitions for Mlex, and I'm very happy to say

that he joins me now.

Okay, Curtis, those are startling statistics there,

and that's the rank and file of those departments.

What is the representation of African Americans

in the most senior positions of those departments?

Well, James, it's not that much better.

In the entirety of U.S. history, there has been just one black assistant attorney general

who oversees the antitrust division.

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