Seamless North America and GrubHub Merger

Seamless North America LLC and GrubHub Inc., the two largest providers of Internet-based online restaurant discovery and food ordering services, sought to merge in mid-2013. The two firms and their counsel, Karen Silverman, Josh Holian, Debbie Won, Miriam McClure and Shahab Asghar of Latham & Watkins LLP for Seamless and Mark Tully, Kirby Lewis, and Todd Hahn of Goodwin Procter LLP for GrubHub retained Compass Lexecon to provide economic analysis of the transaction. Jon Orszag, Kevin Green and Maria Stoyadinova assisted by a team from the Washington, D.C. office that included Genaro Marquez and Piyal Hyder, helped the parties gain regulatory clearances from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Compass Lexecon performed a wide ranging analysis of the competitive effects of the transaction, including a written submission to the DOJ. Our analysis addressed relevant markets for online ordering, the relevance and magnitude of network effects in a two-sided market, and detailed empirical analysis of commission rates across cities and over time, among other topics.