Bottom Line

• MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS. Charter Communications, in the midst of plans to merge with Time Warner Cable, is stocking up on lobby firms. According to disclosure forms, the company added four new firms to its roster: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Franklin Square Group, Heartland Strategies and Peck Madigan Jones. The hiring spree brings its total of outside consulting firms to nine — and includes some top names in Republican and Democratic circles, such as Akin Gump’s Ed Pagano, a former White House legislative affairs official and longtime chief of staff to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); and former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Billy Piper, who is now at Fierce Government Relations.

{mosads}• HEALTHCARE. The Coalition for Organ Distribution Equity (CODE) hired lobby firm Thorn Run Partners to push for “reforms to the system for distributing organs for transplant,” according to recently filed forms. The organization mainly consists of OneLegacy, LiveOnNY and the Greater New York Hospital Association, and is led by Thorn Run lobbyists. “The nation’s organ allocation system continues to make an already dire situation worse by creating geographic disparities in access to organs for transplant: people living in some parts of the country wait far longer and are sicker when they receive an organ than those in other parts of the country,” according to CODE’s website.

• FOREIGN AFFAIRS. APCO Worldwide registered as a foreign agent to represent both the government of Ukraine and the country’s Ministry of Finance. The work, worth a total of $110,000 through July, was primarily directed at garnering media coverage around the U.S. visit of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko last month. Firms and individuals are required to register with the Justice Department, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), if they are working on public relations or advocacy on behalf of a foreign government or an entity owned by a foreign government within the United States.