What the Pros Say (3/26/17)

  • International Retail. Hey! Not to be defensive or anything but there's absolutely nothing "usual" about this newsletter, Baker McKenzie! In fact, ya'll didn't need to fly abroad to INSOL to know that "technology disrupters" are impacting things: you just have to read us every week! What you miss is that all of the examples you site - Uber, Alibaba and Facebook - are "platforms" matching end users with service/product providers, see, also eBay, Amazon. We highly recommend you read "Modern Monopolies" by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson to understand more on this topic. You can get it here. See also the second chart above.
  • Jevic. Whoa. The Supreme Court decision is in. Now open the firm marketing floodgates: Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP's Marc Abrams, Matthew Feldman, Joseph Minias and Paul Shalhoub were among the first to provide a fulsome summary of the decision. As were Weil's David Griffiths and Vincent Yiu here. And Squire Patton Boggs LLP's Kate Thomas here

Chart of the Week (Platforms)

Hey look! The fastest rising commerce apps are all platforms. Shocker. Offerup is a local marketplace for used goods. Letgo is a, uh, local marketplace for used goods. Wish is a, hmmm, marketplace for used goods. Flipp is a platform linking brick-and-mortar ad circulars to end user consumers and Venmo is, obvi, a payment platform that you should've heard of by now (and owned by Ebay). If you're a restructuring professional and you don't yet understand the implications of platforms on retail, you might want to do some homework.

We recommend you start with: "Modern Monopolies" by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson. You can get it here.