[Photo:  Margrethe Vestager, Europ. Commissioner for Competition, Meets Ms. Hesse and Staff at Justice Department / Twitter]

Renata Hesse, formerly head of the antitrust division at the Justice Department, has joined Sullivan & Cromwell as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office.

The move is noteworthy not just because of Ms. Hesse’s stature in legal circles, but also because it is rare for Sullivan & Cromwell and other BigLaw firms to bring in partners from the outside. Until January, Ms. Hesse was acting assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division at the Justice Department, a position she has held twice.

Large companies and their advisers are generally in agreement that merger activity, which has been strong in recent years, will continue at a brisk pace under a business-friendly Trump administration. In part because of the new administration’s hostility to moves that cost American jobs, some expect the complexion of deals to shift, however. Many of the big deals in recent years were premised on large-scale job and other cost cuts amid sluggish economic growth. Now there is expected to be more of a focus on mergers that help companies expand - at home and abroad - at a time when growth shows signs of picking up.

Ms. Hesse played a variety of roles in the antitrust division and was involved in proposed deals including Comcast Corp.’s $45 billion bid for Time Warner Cable Inc., which the cable company abandoned amid stiff regulatory resistance. She has particular expertise in technology and communications matters, and for a time served as senior counsel for transactions to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Prior to her government service, Ms. Hesse was a partner at Wilson Sonsini law.