Michael Moiseyev of Weil, Gotshal & Manges/courtesy photo

Michael Moiseyev, who spent three decades at the Federal Trade Commission and most recently focused on vetting proposed mergers in health care and other industries, has moved to Weil, Gotshal & Manges as a partner.

Moiseyev, who spent over 16 years as the head of the Mergers I division of the FTC's Bureau of Competition until earlier this year, started at Weil on Monday. Weil said Moiseyev's experience, including overseeing more than 100 merger reviews and working with competition regulators in Europe, the U.K. and Canada, will prove useful to clients.

He said in an interview that his move to a partner post at Weil amounts to a reunion with Steven Newborn, who leads the firm's antitrust and competition practice, and several other old colleagues. Newborn was a director of litigation at the FTC's Bureau of Competition until 1994.

"I have known Weil for actually quite some time," he said. "I've been practicing merger law for the government for 30 years, and Weil has been a player in the merger field for as long as I've been active in it."

The Mergers I division is responsible for assessing proposed transactions in drug manufacturing and distribution, medical devices and consumer health products, along with nonhealth-related fields such as defense and technology, according to the FTC's website. Dan Zach, formerly a deputy of Moiseyev's, is now leading the division in an acting capacity, the FTC said in a blog post.

One of Moiseyev's big matters was an action against Otto Bock, which manufactures high-tech prosthetic knees and was found by the FTC to have hindered competition with its acquisition of a competitor, Freedom Innovations. He also helped oversee the FTC's $100 million settlement with pharma giant Mallinckrodt over specialty drug Acthar.

While big tech platforms such as Amazon and Facebook have taken center stage in the revived public discourse around mergers and competition, Moiseyev said a whole range of industries need to be prepared to address regulators. "In general, the types of issues that the government is interested in are broadening and the types of arguments that need to be brought to bear are different now than they were five years ago," he said.

Moiseyev added that the global scope of antitrust review was a prominent part of his government work and he anticipated that it would be at Weil, too

Weil's website lists 47 people with antitrust M&A and litigation capabilities, with more than half of them in its Washington, D.C., office.

Moiseyev's move to Weil comes shortly after Hunton Andrews Kurth announced the arrival of Kevin Hahm, who was an assistant director in the Mergers IV division.