Running a successful business is tough enough. You don't need any added turbulence caused by competition law breaches. Businesses face increased cartel-busting at EU and UK level. There's also the evolving area of competition litigation and the questions it poses including 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 have long experience in helping you navigate these difficult paths while keeping your focus on your business. We have in-depth knowledge of a range of different sectors and how the competition rules apply in practice across different sectors. 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.
Relevant experience includes advising:
- A potentially dominant pharmaceutical supplier, providing competition law compliance solutions in rebranding and promotional programmes, involving issues such as discriminatory and predatory pricing
- A leading retailer of sports goods on its whistle-blowing on a price-fixing cartel and subsequent OFT cartel investigation and Competition Appeal Tribunal proceedings
- One of the world's leading personal care companies on competition law compliance, especially pricing and distribution issues
- A UK construction company at dawn raids (carried out simultaneously in a number of locations) and in the preparation of what is probably the most wide-ranging leniency application the OFT has ever received
- Northern Ireland Electricity on competition input to a range of regulatory issues including Moyle Interconnector, new plant commissioning and tariff issues
- An automotive manufacturer on competition aspects of retail pricing in Europe including distribution and marketing 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.