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

• Anticorruption Compliance & Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
• Antitrust Litigation & Government Investigations
• Antitrust Regulation of Mergers & Acquisitions and Other Business Combinations
• EU Regulatory
• Government Contracts
• International Trade Policy & Global Market Access
• International Trade Remedies and Enforcement
• International Transaction Regulations, Export Controls & Customs

Representative Experience

• Representing defense contractor Advanced Testing Technologies, Inc. in government investigations into possible export violations.
• Settling an extremely significant antitrust case on behalf of the largest steel company in the world against its industrial gas supplier for its huge steel-making facilities in Northwest Indiana. The matter related to supply agreements for industrial gas supplied via an industrial gas pipeline owned and operated by the world’s largest industrial gas supplier. After the US District Court for the Northern District of Indiana denied the defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint, the defendant came to the bargaining table resulting in a settlement agreement that included new supply agreements with very significant costs savings to our client.
• Serving as counsel to the purchaser, a publicly traded, Japan-based global printing and printing products company, in its US$650 million acquisition of the stock of one of the leading worldwide producers of photomasks, used in the manufacture of semiconductors; the company operates the industry's most expansive global photomask production network, spanning China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and the United States.
• Representing a leading manufacturer of antifreeze in a Federal Trade Commission investigation challenging its advertising.
• Advising a major US-based producer of fuel additives in its purchase of an entire metalworking product line from a private company based in Pennsylvania. We represented our client in a merger investigation before the Federal Trade Commission.
• Representing a major insurance provider in Japan’s postal privatization. We worked to ensure that postal regulations were pro-competitive and enabled foreign investors to compete against the newly formed Japan Postal companies.
• Obtaining a commodity jurisdiction determination that a component used in spacecraft applications is under Commerce Department dual-use export licensing jurisdiction.
• Serving as export controls ombudsman for a large multinational company including resolving day-to-day licensing and compliance matters, drafting compliance procedures, and drafting and presenting training materials.
• 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.