Adonis Hoffman

 Professional Background

• Adonis Hoffman, Esq. is a lawyer, business strategist and noted thought leader with over 30 years of high-level legal, government and international experience in media, communications, public policy and corporate affairs. He has worked with CEOs, corporate boards and Fortune corporations, policymakers, foreign leaders, trade associations, institutional investors, embassies, and international organizations on a range of global and domestic issues. Hoffman provides strategic insights to policymakers, the news media, and investors as part of his branded Advisory Counsel series.

• Mr. Hoffman is founder and chairman of Business in the Public Interest, Inc.; CEO of The Advisory Counsel, Inc., and Adjunct Professor of Communication, Culture & Technology at Georgetown University. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Media Institute, co-chairman of the External Advisory Council of Nielsen Media, editor and publisher of Inside the FCC, and a contributor to The Hill newspaper.  He provides strategic advisory counsel to organizations and investors on compliance, risk, M&A, diversity, inclusion and reputation management, as well as regulatory and public policy developments. 

• Hoffman served from 2013 - 2015 as Chief of Staff and Senior Legal Advisor at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), working with the FCC Chairman, Commissioners and senior staff on key communications policy matters, including Net Neutrality; media ownership; broadcast and wireless spectrum; wireless and broadcast auctions; re-transmission agreements; privacy enforcement; consumer protection, TCPA, and mega mergers in the media, broadband and internet sectors, including Comcast - TWC - Charter; ATT - DirecTV, and over a dozen broadcast and telecom transactions. He served earlier at the FCC from 1998-2000 as Deputy Chief of the Cable Bureau and Policy Advisor to the FCC Chairman, where he worked on the ATT- Media One merger and the AOL - Time Warner merger, and was appointed chair of the Interagency Task Force on Advertising Practices.  

• Mr. Hoffman served in the U.S. House of Representatives (102nd Congress) (97th, 98th Congresses) in senior legal and policy positions, including committee counsel and subcommittee staff director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Legislative Director for a Member of the House, and staff counsel to the District of Columbia Subcommittee on the Judiciary.  

• Hoffman was later appointed senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,  senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, and Fellow at the Capitol Policy Institute in Washington.  His work in constitutional and electoral reform took him to thirty countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and allowed him to lead several delegations of international election observers.

• From 2000-2010, Hoffman worked as senior vice president and counsel at the American Association of Advertising Agencies (the 4As), responsible for legislative, regulatory and legal matters, and represented the advertising industry before Congress, the FTC, and federal courts. Hoffman helped lead the advertising industry's self-regulatory initiatives, including food marketing, advertising to children, and online consumer privacy initiatives.  

• Mr. Hoffman established and chaired the American Business Leadership Institute; consulted with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and served as a member of the National Advertising Review Board (NARB).  He worked as Managing Director with Capitol Exchange Corporation; associate attorney at Hopkins & Sutter; and commercial banker at Bank of America. 

• Hoffman is a Contributor to The Hill newspaper, and his articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Broadcasting & Cable, The Washington Times, Multichannel News, National Journal and Foreign Policy. He has appeared on CNBC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, PBS, Voice of America, Canadian Broadcasting, and numerous international networks, and has been widely quoted in national news media, including AP, Reuters, Time, and USA Today. Hoffman's Wall Street Journal article on the TCPA was cited in the Petitioner's Brief in Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez in the U.S. Supreme Court, 2015. Hoffman is the author of Doing Good--the New Rules of Corporate Responsibility, Conscience and Character (2010).  

• Mr. Hoffman earned an A.B. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He is admitted to practice law before the District of Columbia. Court of Appeals; the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; the U.S. Court of International Trade and the United States Supreme Court. 

Affiliated Sites 

• Business in the Public Interest, Inc.
• The Advisory Counsel, Inc.
• Inside the FCC

• From major industry conferences to intimate corporate board meetings, Adonis Hoffman speaks to today's leaders on business, reputation and policy practices for success. 
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• Hoffman is a frequent commentator on cable and broadcast television, and contributes commentary on key policy issues to leading newspapers and magazines.
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• Mr. Hoffman is often called on by the news media, industry trade groups, and federal policymakers for insight and commentary on some of the largest communications deals of the day.  Hoffman appears occasionally on CNBC and is a Contributor to Broadcasting & Cable magazine, The Hill newspaper and is publisher and editor of Inside the FCC.

• Washington has become the merger capital of the world. With several multibillion-dollar deals in the works, the FCC, FTC and DOJ are today’s proving grounds. Mega media transactions have ushered the obscure rules of mergers out of the shadows and into public view, where success is measured in more than shareholder value. In days gone by, a corporate merger was a marriage between two  companies that decided it was good to combine. But like modern-day  marriage, mergers too have changed. No longer just corporate unions,  mergers have become multi-stakeholder exercises with often-competing  interests.In recent years, media mergers have become the platform  of choice for nascent competitors, consumer groups, community  activists, elected officials and almost anyone with an angle to play or  an axe to grind. Many have mastered the fine art of merger mischief,  using apocryphal comments in the public record to turn the tide of  opinion. Companies seeking FCC approval have been at the mercy of  malcontents advancing conditions that would be otherwise laughable but  for a pending merger review. But not more. The rules of the game have changed under the Trump Administration. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Michael O’Rielly  have shifted the agency’s merger-review focus to the four corners of the  transaction, placing the emphasis on the merits of the deal rather than  its conditions.  The jury is still out as to the effect these changes will have on M & A activity in 2018 and beyond.

• (Full article originally published in Broadcasting & Cable magazine, November 7, 2017.)

• A recent Wall Street Journal article  identified a wave of mergers that are testing the limits of antitrust  laws. From beer to appliances to airlines and the media, concentration and convergence are taking place. "Go big or go  home" is a mantra among merger advisory experts who cite scale  as the key advantage in a competitive global market. While  bigger is not always better for consumers, growth through  acquisition can be a winning strategy for investors and the bottom line.  prices, lower quality  goods or services. When it comes to transactions involving licenses and authorizations under the Communications Act, Congress has directed the FCC  to determine whether proposed mergers would serve the "public interest,  convenience and necessity." This broad and somewhat amorphous standard  allows the FCC considerable leeway in its review of communications  mergers. The public interest standard encompasses such considerations as  diversity, localism, innovation, and providing new or additional  services to consumers, in addition to the congressional goal of  "promoting the widespread dissemination of information from a  multiplicity of sources."Through its focus on the public  interest, the FCC review is considerably more open, transparent and  inclusive than the antitrust merger reviews conducted by the FTC and  DOJ. But it is this glasnost element that has become problematic. When a  public company seeks to merge, its very soul is laid bare for the world  to see. Its profits, plans, policies and practices are open to scrutiny  from anyone who can prove the slightest interest in the proposed  transaction. But not every inquiry is well-intentioned. Nowhere is this more pronounced  than in the media and communications sector, where convergence,  consolidation and competition are robust.

• Complete article originally published in The Hill newspaper, October 22, 2015.