JBS SA, the world’s largest meat supplier, has tapped one of its outside law firms for a new head of ethics and compliance as it looks to turn the page on antitrust woes that have cost the company and its affiliates nearly $300 million.
Nora Feher, a complex litigation associate at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, joined JBS USA Holdings Inc.—the Brazilian company’s U.S. affiliate—as its ethics chief last month. Company spokeswoman Nikki Richardson said Feher reports to chief legal officer Kevin Arquit, who joined JBS last year.
Quinn Emanuel has been representing JBS in several antitrust actions related to price-fixing for different meat products. Fehrer is the latest in a string of ethics lawyers that the company and its affiliates have added in recent months.
Quinn Emanuel lawyers counseled the company on a $52.5 million settlement announced last week in a cartel case filed by beef wholesalers.
A year ago, Quinn Emanuel advised JBS as it secured a federal judge’s approval of a $24.5 million antitrust settlement with pork wholesalers. The firm also took the lead for JBS on another $20 million settlement with pork consumers and a nearly $13 million deal with restaurants and retailers agreed upon last November.
JBS has turned to Quinn Emanuel to handle nearly 5% of its U.S. federal litigation docket within the past five years, according to Bloomberg Law data.
Feher didn’t respond to a request for comment about her new position at JBS, whose U.S. headquarters is in Greeley, Colo. She spent the past seven years at Quinn Emanuel, working out of the firm’s offices in New York and Los Angeles, and was previously an executive assistant to Morgan Stanley’s chief legal officer.
JBS owns Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., the world’s second-largest chicken producer.
Bloomberg Law reported in January on Pilgrim hiring a pair of ethics and compliance professionals in Victoria Lane and Michael Koenig, both of whom had previously been partners at Hinckley, Allen & Snyder in Albany, N.Y.
In December, Pilgrim’s received court approval for a $76 million antitrust settlement in a chicken cartel class action case. That same month former Pilgrim’s CEO Jayson Penn and several other poultry industry executives facing criminal chicken market-rigging charges saw a federal case against them end in a mistrial.
Pilgrim’s agreed to pay a $110.5 million fine in late 2020 to resolve a criminal antitrust case filed against the company by the Justice Department.
Arquit, hired last year by JBS for its newly created global legal chief role, previously led the antitrust practices at Kasowitz Benson Torres, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Kimberly Pryor, who has spent almost the past decade at JBS and was named general counsel in 2020, is now part of Arquit’s team.
Christopher Gaddis, a former general counsel at JBS, currently serves as the company’s head of human resources. Nicholas White, another longtime JBS in-house lawyer who has also held the roles of general counsel and head of ethics and compliance, is now the company’s head of health, safety, and security.
JBS announced in early 2018 its hire of attorney Lance Kotschwar to serve as its head of ethics and compliance. Kotschwar left JBS in late 2020 to become compliance director at Saint Joseph, Mo.-based pork processor Triumph Foods LLC.
