Seth Bloom wouldn’t call himself a technology geek he only recently got his first smartphone but when it comes to antitrust laws, he believes they’re just as relevant for today’s ever-changing tech industry as they were 100 years ago.
Bloom, general counsel to Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, has been a leading force behind the subcommittee chairman’s efforts to curb anticompetitive behavior among some of the biggest names in tech. Last fall, he guided the subcommittee’s probe of AT&T Inc.’s proposed merger with T-Mobile USA, which Kohl opposed. Once federal regulators moved to challenge the $39 billion bid, AT&T abandoned the effort, an outcome that Bloom said was one of the subcommittee’s “singular accomplishments” in recent years.
