It's fine for her not to recuse herself. Assuming her husband doesn't work on the DoubleClick matter, or is walled from it, the actual chance of a conflict of interest is remote.*
You'd basically have to argue that Jones Day (which earns money from billing time, not from the value of the transaction) would profit as a whole from the merger, and her husband, as a partner, would then earn some amount from the increased partnership pool, benefiting her in some way. This would presumably incentivize her to approve the merger.
This is an extremely tenuous argument - law firm partnership profits are so diluted that her benefit, if any, would be marginal; plus, in terms of profits, Jones Day is agnostic as to the merger being approved (and probably makes more money the longer it takes). I don't recall the law off the top of my head, but I think even a federal judge is perfectly within his discretion to deny recusal in a circumstance like this, where the perceived financial interest is so remote that bias concerns weaken.
The other argument is that because her husband is a partner at Jones Day and she was an associate there, she wants all of their clients to succeed. That's just plain wrong for a lot of lawyers - firms take on clients all the time that most associates/partners don't care about or even are personally hostile towards.
I assume that the FTC or the APA (Administrative Procedure Act) have provisions that cover recusal, but I don't know them.
I don't blame her for refusing to recuse herself. This smacks of a lot of people who are against the merger looking for a technicality to cast doubt on any positive resolution. Any actual appearance of bias is weak.
*Note, if her husband actually is working on the merger or has worked with DoubleClick as a client in the past, or if she has, the whole analysis changes and she should probably recuse herself.
Developers is certainly NOT Sony's weak point. The PS2 WAS hard to program for back when the system was first introduced, but all of the major developers (EA, Capcom, Konami, the list goes on and on) have clearly begun to master the use of the platform. If you want examples that you can buy today, look at a game like Devil May Cry. It has amazing graphics, innovative gameplay and insanely tight controls. I don't think they could have made this game if they had trouble developing on a PS2 these days. By releasing the PS2 a year ago, Sony gave developers time to learn the platform. And imagine in a few years we will see even better things come from it.
Go look at the list of games coming out for XBox and tell me honestly how many of those you would actually want to play. MS is going to lose on this one, for once, because they underestimated the market. People don't just want eye candy, they want quality games that are fun to play. Why buy an XBox when I can get that and a DVD player on PS2 (without paying for an extra DVD player add-on like you have to with the XBox).
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It's fine for her not to recuse herself. Assuming her husband doesn't work on the DoubleClick matter, or is walled from it, the actual chance of a conflict of interest is remote.*
You'd basically have to argue that Jones Day (which earns money from billing time, not from the value of the transaction) would profit as a whole from the merger, and her husband, as a partner, would then earn some amount from the increased partnership pool, benefiting her in some way. This would presumably incentivize her to approve the merger.
This is an extremely tenuous argument - law firm partnership profits are so diluted that her benefit, if any, would be marginal; plus, in terms of profits, Jones Day is agnostic as to the merger being approved (and probably makes more money the longer it takes). I don't recall the law off the top of my head, but I think even a federal judge is perfectly within his discretion to deny recusal in a circumstance like this, where the perceived financial interest is so remote that bias concerns weaken.
The other argument is that because her husband is a partner at Jones Day and she was an associate there, she wants all of their clients to succeed. That's just plain wrong for a lot of lawyers - firms take on clients all the time that most associates/partners don't care about or even are personally hostile towards.
I assume that the FTC or the APA (Administrative Procedure Act) have provisions that cover recusal, but I don't know them.
I don't blame her for refusing to recuse herself. This smacks of a lot of people who are against the merger looking for a technicality to cast doubt on any positive resolution. Any actual appearance of bias is weak.
*Note, if her husband actually is working on the merger or has worked with DoubleClick as a client in the past, or if she has, the whole analysis changes and she should probably recuse herself.
Developers is certainly NOT Sony's weak point. The PS2 WAS hard to program for back when the system was first introduced, but all of the major developers (EA, Capcom, Konami, the list goes on and on) have clearly begun to master the use of the platform. If you want examples that you can buy today, look at a game like Devil May Cry. It has amazing graphics, innovative gameplay and insanely tight controls. I don't think they could have made this game if they had trouble developing on a PS2 these days. By releasing the PS2 a year ago, Sony gave developers time to learn the platform. And imagine in a few years we will see even better things come from it.
Go look at the list of games coming out for XBox and tell me honestly how many of those you would actually want to play. MS is going to lose on this one, for once, because they underestimated the market. People don't just want eye candy, they want quality games that are fun to play. Why buy an XBox when I can get that and a DVD player on PS2 (without paying for an extra DVD player add-on like you have to with the XBox).