Competition

Our team is regarded by corporates, regulators and peers as one of the leading global competition practices. With over 150 dedicated competition lawyers, including 33 partners working across the world, our team embraces the continued globalisation of competition law and policy. Our core team is strengthened by alliances with top tier law firms in Australia (Allens), South Africa (Webber Wentzel) and India (Talwar Thakore & Associates). We strive to nurture the emerging generation of global antitrust lawyers and enforcers.

Our clients turn to us time and again to advise on their most strategic global, EU and national competition matters, where a deep understanding of their businesses and strategies is essential.

Specifically, what sets us apart is:

• our track record of success in dealing effectively and efficiently with complex matters, by providing top-rate legal advice and astute strategic counselling
• our ability to access and talk easily with decision-makers
• belonging to a broader, truly integrated global team

We advise on merger control, cartels and dawn raids, competition litigation, market and sector investigations, abuse of dominance, state aid, public procurement and utilities regulation.

We have developed an eLearning tool, which is available in a number of languages (including Mandarin), and offers an economic and effective way of achieving global training on competition law issues. We provide ‘train the trainer’ sessions so in-house legal and compliance teams are able to provide ongoing specialist support with confidence.

Our recent experience includes advising:

• leading European and global corporates on strategic deals such as: Sanofi in a swap of its Animal Health business for Boehringer’s Consumer Healthcare business; SABMiller in relation to the competition law aspects of the €101bn tie up with brewers Anheuser-Busch InBev; Novartis on the acquisition of GSK’s oncology business; and Intel on its acquisition of Altera (Intel’s largest acquisition to date) and of the antivirus software company McAfee
• defendants from Europe, Asia and the U.S. in most of the major global cartel and antitrust investigations including those concerning automotive parts, Euribor, Libor, Forex, credit default swaps, power cables, TV tubes, bananas, flat glass and car glass, vitamins, hydrogen peroxide, air cargo and marine hoses
• actual and potential defendants in relation to damages actions following the major global and European cartel and antitrust investigations (including air cargo, car glass, cathode ray tubes, on-line price comparison (Google) and multilateral interchange fees)
• leading industry players on all of the major European Commission sector inquiries to date (e-commerce, healthcare, energy, telecoms and financial services) and many key national investigations including in the energy, groceries, banking and fuel sectors
• the Belgian state as well as a number of corporates in relation to the European Commission’s state aid investigation into Belgian tax rulings, one of the most high profile state aid cases of recent years.