Running a successful business is tough enough.  You don't need the added turbulence of competition law complaints.  Businesses face increased cartel-busting at EU and UK level.  There's also the evolving area of competition litigation and the questions it poses: what is it? do you need to worry about it? how can you use it?  Companies with potentially dominant products confront daily uncertainties about business strategies. Mergers and acquisitions need speedy clearance from often numerous merger control regimes.

Our team of competition lawyers has long experience in helping business navigate these difficult paths so that clients can keep their focus on their business.  We have in-depth knowledge of how the competition rules apply in practice across different markets.  Our sector focus helps us understand your business environment and get to grips with your issues.

We can help you devise your business strategies to address these challenges and take advantage of opportunities that they offer.  We also have hands-on experience of dealing with the competition authorities and courts and we work with our CMS network of specialist competition lawyers across the EU and beyond.

The CMS Competition Practice Group has more than 150 competition lawyers in 22 countries, making it one of the largest competition teams within Europe.  Our competition experts provide you with tailor-made advice on competition issues at both the European Union (EU) and national levels.  The competition lawyers spread across the CMS offices are supported by the CMS EU Law Office in Brussels.

Relevant experience includes advising:

• Acting for global pharmaceutical giant Takeda on multijurisdictional merger control aspects of its €9.6 billion acquisition of Nycomed
• Lloyds Development Capital on the acquisition of Easynet, the global provider of managed business solutions, from BSkyB
• The Department for Transport on state aid issues regarding a major restructuring of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link
• Erste Bank der oesterreichischen Sparkassen on state aid notifications in a series of acquisitions through privatisation, including in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary. Notably obtaining the final decision from the European Commission following in-depth investigation of Erste’s acquisition of the Hungarian Postabank for HUF 101.3 billion
• Amazon on competition law in a range of e-tailing issues
• BT regarding competition, procurement and regulatory issues including appeals to the Competition Appeal Tribunal
• Coca-Cola Enterprises on a range of issues in relation to joint ventures, distribution, pricing, competition audits and training
• RWE on a 50/50 joint venture with E.ON to develop new nuclear power stations beginning with the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency’s auction for New Nuclear Build sites, including merger control and behavioural issues

Our Competition group also regularly acts for many types of organisations in the UK and across Central and Eastern Europe on a wide range of related work in the Consumer Products, Energy, Lifesciences and TMT sectors.