When Robert Pitofsky took the reins of the Federal Trade Commission two decades ago, robust antitrust enforcement wasn’t exactly the rage. Through the 1980s and into the next decade, the FTC’s top antitrust cops largely stood by as a wave of corporate buyouts and takeovers left U.S. industry more and more concentrated.
Then, in 1995, Pitofsky stepped in as FTC chair. The former Georgetown University Law Center dean had done two previous tours at the agency, as head of its consumer protection bureau and as an FTC commissioner. With his calm, buttoned-down demeanor, he was no radical. But as Georgetown antitrust professor Steven Salop recalls, Pitofsky also wasn’t one “to just sit around and chew gum.” Unlike his Reagan-era predecessors, he believed that the FTC’s antitrust enforcers had a critical role. “He really reinvigorated the place,” says Salop.
