Christine Varney, the assistant attorney general who ran the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division, is stepping down from her post. Varney ran the division during the federal review of the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger, and according to the Wall Street Journal, she is resigning in August to join the prestigious New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. During Varney’s tenure at the top of the antitrust division, the DOJ took an aggressive approach to investigating mergers, and in the case of the Ticketmaster/Live Nation deal, the DOJ required several concessions from the two before the department would approve the agreement.
