Antitrust, Competition & International Trade
We regularly advise a diverse range of clients, from major multinational corporations to privately held companies and trade associations, on issues arising from antitrust and competition regulation (including consumer protection and advertising matters), acquisition of companies in the US defense and homeland security industries by non-US entities, international trade regulation (including export control matters) and other forms of economic regulation (including government contracting issues). We offer know-how in the widely varied regulatory regimes of North America, Europe (including Central and Eastern Europe), Latin America and Asia.
Our greatest concentrations of resources are in Washington DC and Brussels, Belgium. From these two international regulatory centers, we provide antitrust and trade regulation counseling on business operations worldwide. Our lawyers are recognized experts in the field and pride themselves on responsiveness and client-driven problem-solving. When necessary, we have highly talented and experienced antitrust trial lawyers. Our trial teams have litigated a complete range of antitrust matters – from monopolization cases to dealer terminations to preliminary injunction matters.
Many of our antitrust, competition, trade regulatory lawyers can bring to bear direct experience with these practice areas, having spent portions of their careers with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Department of Justice, the International Trade Commission or the European Commission. The breadth and expertise of the Squire Sanders antitrust and trade team allow us to achieve our clients' objectives in an expedited and cost-effective manner.
The group prides itself on its counseling ability – so that clients can avoid costly litigation through preventive counseling. Our clients routinely rely on our advice in a wide variety of contexts including the formulation and implementation of distribution programs, the structuring of licensing arrangements, the sharing of competitively sensitive information, participation in standards setting associations, and in the planning of complex business combinations that raise competitive issues. As with all the group's activities, our counseling efforts are often international in scope.
Practice Expertise
Representative Experience
- Obtaining a commodity jurisdiction determination that a component used in spacecraft applications is under Commerce Department dual-use export licensing jurisdiction.
- Establishing procedures and obtaining (deemed export) approvals for non-US person employees, professors and students working in the laboratory of a major educational institution.
- Advising on US regulatory (competition) aspects of the €67.257 billion (US$105.6 billion) merger of two major European utilities to create the world's second largest utility, a Paris-based company serving about 214 million gas, water and electricity consumers across four continents, also fending off a hostile bid for our client. The deal was recognized as the #2 deal by Deal Week in their three-year roundup of top deals for European Energy, Mining and Utilities Deals (March 2005-March 2008).
- Defending a US-based airline in an investigation of its acquisition of a large tour operator.
- Defending a hospital and its managed care plan in a series of antitrust cases alleging a conspiracy to monopolize certain managed care and hospital markets.
- Advising a major food group on trade barriers and investment restrictions around the world.
- Advising a major non-US airline in parallel antitrust investigations by the US Department of Justice and the European Union involving criminal allegations of cargo rate coordination in numerous markets. The defendants also included most of the world's major airlines.
- Assisting an Italy-based high technology company to clear CFIUS review and bring the newly acquired companies into compliance with US export control requirements.
- Advising a major producer of fuel additives in its purchase of a refrigeration lubricants business for US$125.2 million from a UK-based specialty chemicals firm. Through a joint effort of by our Washington DC and Brussels offices we also represented our client before the German Bundeskartellamt in clearing the acquisition.
- Assisting a US-based information security company to determine US, France and China export and import requirements and restrictions for dual use encryption technology and obtaining mass market treatment for the products from the US Commerce Department.