By Diane Bartz
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The acting head of the U.S.
Justice Department's Antitrust Division, Joseph Wayland, will
step down as of Nov. 16, a department spokeswoman said on
Thursday.
No one has been named to be the acting assistant attorney
general for antitrust, said the spokeswoman, Gina Talamona.
The position has been without a confirmed chief since
Christine Varney left in mid-2011. Since then, the nomination of
William Baer to succeed her has stalled in the Senate.
Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican Senator, has opposed
Baer's nomination but has not publicly said why.
Baer, a prominent attorney with the law firm Arnold & Porter
LLP, was nominated in early February.
Wayland, whose family lives in New York, will return there,
according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported he
was leaving. Before coming to the Justice Department, he
specialized in complex business litigation, including antitrust
and securities cases.
The Justice Department recruited Wayland in September 2010
to lead litigation efforts at the division, a hire that appears
to have paid off.
President Barack Obama's Justice Department successfully
opposed AT&T Inc's planned $39 billion deal to acquire wireless
rival T-Mobile USA and stopped NASDAQ OMX Group and
IntercontinentalExchange Inc from buying NYSE Euronext.
But the department reached compromises on other deals, such
as Ticketmaster's purchase of Live Nation in 2010, Google I nc' s
a c quisitions of ticketing software company ITA and smartphone
handset maker Motorola Mobility, and Verizon Wireless'
controversial plan to buy airwaves from cable operators.
The division is looking at price-fixing in industries as
disparate as auto parts, optical disk drives and the derivatives
market, as well as interest-rate manipulation and whether cable
companies are trying to prevent the rise of Internet video as an
alternative to television.
It has also sued Apple and two publishers - Verlagsgruppe
Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH's Macmillan and Pearson Plc's Penguin
Group - accusing them of fixing prices of electronic books.
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