Cornerstone Research Names Amazon’s Phil Leslie as Firm’s First Chief Technology and Innovation Officer

Steven Davidoff Solomon

Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law,
Faculty Codirector, Berkeley Center for Law and Business,
UC Berkeley School of Law, University of California

Steven Davidoff Solomon is one of the nation’s best-known authorities on corporate law and governance. Professor Solomon specializes in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), disclosure processes and procedures, corporate governance (including issues of corporate separateness), and capital markets regulation. His interdisciplinary research focuses on topics involving law, finance, and accounting. Professor Solomon studies and has been frequently retained by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in litigation related to disclosure processes and procedures, and by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to advise on principles of corporate separateness.

Professor Solomon has often been called to testify before the U.S. Senate, in state and federal courts, and in domestic and international arbitration tribunals. He provides testimony at trial and in deposition in complex litigation involving antitrust and competition, M&A, and disclosure. His corporate governance includes matters related to nonprofits, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), as well as such issues as piercing the corporate veil, evaluating contracts, and analyzing damages. The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) has honored him multiple times as one of the 100 most influential governance professionals in the United States.

For almost a decade, Professor Solomon wrote a weekly column on corporate issues for the New York Times as the Deal Professor. He coauthored Mergers and Acquisitions: Law, Theory, and Practice, a leading casebook in the field, as well as several other volumes focused on M&A and corporate law. Professor Solomon publishes his research in top-tier academic journals in law, finance, and accounting.

At UC Berkeley School of Law, Professor Solomon teaches courses on law, economics and accounting, M&A, and business associations.

Prior to entering academia, Professor Solomon practiced as an attorney with Shearman & Sterling in New York and London, and with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London. He represented U.S. and European clients in securities law matters, acquisitions and sales of public and private companies, joint ventures, and private equity and venture capital investments.

Professor Solomon sits on the board of directors of a SPAC, where he chairs the audit, nominating, and compensation committees.

Erin Trish

Associate Professor,
Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics,
Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences,
Co-Director, Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics,
University of Southern California

Erin Trish is an expert in pharmaceutical and healthcare economics. Her research focuses on the intersection of public policy and competition in healthcare and pharmaceutical markets, including Medicare, the No Surprises Act (NSA), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), insurer and hospital market concentration, pharmaceutical pricing, and the role of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

Professor Trish has served as an expert witness in multiple life sciences and healthcare matters and has both trial and deposition experience. She has provided expert testimony in arbitration and in litigation involving the False Claims Act, price fixing and market allocation, and killer acquisitions.

In addition, Professor Trish has testified before the U.S. Congress and in the California State Assembly, and presented her research at numerous federal agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Congressional Budget Office.

In her research focused on the pharmaceutical industry, Professor Trish analyzes market structure, prescription drug expenditures, pharmacy networks, and firms’ financial incentives. She is a leading expert on brand and generic drug markets, PBMs, and the funding and benefit design of Medicare Part D, Medicaid, and commercial prescription drug insurance.

Professor Trish’s healthcare research addresses regulation and policy, market participants, and outcomes. Her expertise includes market concentration and vertical integration, payor-provider bargaining, out-of-network reimbursement for emergency care, commercial insurance, Medicare Advantage, and exchange market functioning.

Professor Trish publishes in leading health policy, health economics, and medical journals. Her work has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, the American Journal of Managed Care, and the Journal of Health Economics, among others. She has won several research awards, notably the Seema S. Sonnad Emerging Leader in Managed Care Research Award, which recognizes early achievements in the field and potential for exceptional long-term contributions.

At USC, Professor Trish teaches executive-level courses in health policy and management at the Marshall School of Business. She also serves as a nonresident fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

Ashley Langer

Associate Professor of Economics,
Eller College of Management,
University of Arizona

Ashley Langer is an econometrics, energy, and industrial organization expert. Professor Langer applies sophisticated empirical methods to study regulation, competition, and firm and consumer behavior. She analyzes a range of economic issues, including those involving energy markets, transportation, and the environment. Professor Langer has testified on issues related to class certification and economic damages, including in such high-profile class actions as Guzman et al. v. Polaris Inc. et al. and Garcia et al. v. Volkswagen Group of America Inc. et al.

Professor Langer has analyzed consumer decisions, including those related to the automotive and oil industries. She has evaluated decisions on which vehicles to drive, how preferences form, when and where to purchase fuel, and whether to adopt electric vehicles. She has also investigated the impact of consumer demographic group preferences on vehicle pricing.

In her recent research, Professor Langer has assessed energy and environmental policy design issues. For example, she has analyzed international oil markets and the factors that influence pricing, as well as how Clean Air Act regulatory enforcement affects pollution levels and firms’ investment decisions. Further, she has studied the impact of energy policy on durable goods such as automobiles and residential solar. In particular, Professor Langer has examined how households respond to solar subsidies that change over time, how uncertainty surrounding policy enforcement affects coal power plant retirement and upgrade decisions, and how taxing vehicle mileage (rather than fuel consumption) changes Highway Trust Fund revenues. Her earlier work includes assessing the effect of congestion tolling on urban land use.

Professor Langer’s research has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Lexology Index (formerly Who’s Who Legal) has named Professor Langer a Future Leader among global competition experts and has also recommended her as a leading competition economist and consulting expert.

At the University of Arizona, Professor Langer teaches courses in business strategy, empirical research methods, environmental economics, energy and environmental policy, and government regulation. She has been honored with several teaching and advising awards. In addition, Professor Langer presents on industrial organization and empirical research methods, as well as transportation, energy, and environmental topics, at professional conferences and universities in the United States and internationally.

Professor Langer previously taught at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She was a visiting scholar at Columbia Business School and the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago, University of Chicago.