Antitrust litigation

Our antitrust litigation team has represented clients in the most significant “bet the company” antitrust cases and highest profile investigations, including Trucks, FX, LIBOR, Air Cargo, ISDAfix, U.S. Treasuries, and Interchange. We have been involved in nearly all of the leading matters relating to the financial services industry.

Our global team handles:

• Anti-competitive agreement / cartel cases
• Abuse of dominance / monopolization cases
• Private damages and follow-on civil litigation, including group / class actions
• White collar and criminal defense
• S. Sherman Act Section 1 and 2 claims
• S. FTC Section 5 claims
• Sector and market investigations / studies
• State aid cases
• “Dawn raid” preparedness and response
• Pre-emptive compliance counselling

We have extensive experience handling antitrust cases involving the world’s most active enforcement agencies including the European Commission, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Federal Trade commission, the UK Competition and Markets Authority, and various other national agencies including throughout Europe and Asia-Pacific.

We have successfully litigated multi-billion dollar cases before all of the key tribunals including the European Court of Justice, the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal (including appeals to the Court of Appeal and UK Supreme Court), U.S. federal and state courts , and courts throughout the EEA.

We combine procedural insight, technical expertise and extensive trial experience with strategic advice to achieve successful outcomes when pursuing or defending claims before regulators or courts. We also represent clients in cases bought by claimant firms on a class action basis and supported by litigation funders, which require a tailored approach.

Representative matters

• Scania in one of the largest-ever European cartel cases, Trucks, handling the appeal of the European Commission’s decision to the European General Court, and the subsequent appeal to the European Court of Justice, and defending follow-on private damages claims across the EEA and beyond.
• Booz Allen Hamilton in defending and settling a first-of-its kind “no poach” antitrust class action alleging an unlawful agreement to restrain the market for skilled labor; and in achieving a significant victory over the DOJ’s attempt to block its USD440 million acquisition of EverWatch, which allowed the merger to close and ultimately led DOJ to drop the case.
• JetBlue in an antitrust litigation brought by Fareportal, Inc., an online travel agent, in connection to claims for violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, as well as claims for breach of contract and promissory estoppel.

• Micron in a private damages claim brought by the liquidators of Granville Technology Group, VMT, and OT Computers in a three-week trial of the DOJ’s challenge to the proposed merger between Simon & Shuster and Penguin Random House.
• SS&C Technologies Inc. in obtaining dismissals of claims by competitors that SS&C monopolized alleged markets relating to financial technology software.
• Two major investment banks in defending litigation across Europe, in Australia, and the U.S., arising from alleged anti-competitive conduct in the foreign exchange (FX) markets.
• Visa Europe Member Representative (VEMR) (a trust company representing 441 European banks) on various claims that have been brought against Visa by well-known UK and European retailers concerning Visa’s default multilateral interchange fee (MIF).