Ben Able is an antitrust and competition partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Ben’s work focuses on securing antitrust clearance for clients’ proposed transactions from the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission and defending against antitrust agency scrutiny of business conduct.
Prior to joining Kirkland, Ben served for eight years as a trial attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, both in its Healthcare and Consumer Products (2020–2025) and Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture (2017–2020) Sections. Throughout his tenure, Ben led or held key roles on several high-profile enforcement matters across various industries and deposed numerous senior executives in merger and conduct matters during both investigations and litigation.
At the Antitrust Division, Ben led a second request investigation into a vertical acquisition by a large, national healthcare entity and served as substantive lead in the division’s suit to block Aon plc’s proposed acquisition of Willis Towers Watson plc, which resulted in abandonment. Ben served on trial teams for the division’s suits to block UnitedHealth Group Inc’s acquisition of Change Healthcare, Inc. and Sabre Corp.’s acquisition of Farelogix Inc., in the latter helping prepare the government’s principal economic expert to testify at trial. Ben helped negotiate the division’s largest asset carve-out divestiture as part of its approval of Bayer AG’s acquisition of Monsanto Co. and served as substantive divestiture lead in the division’s approval of UnitedHealth Group Inc’s acquisition of Amedisys, Inc. Ben has substantial experience with conduct enforcement, having played a key role during the investigation phase to develop claims ultimately brought by the division in its successful suit against Alphabet Inc. (Google) in advertising technology markets.
