RadcliffesLeBrasseur advises on a wide range of competition/antitrust matters including:
- Merger clearance advice and applications for clearance.
- The UK prohibition on anti-competitive agreements.
- The European prohibition on anti-competitive agreements.
- The UK prohibition on the abuse of a domimamt position.
- The European prohibition on the abuse of a dominant position.
In relation to mergers and acquisitions, breaches of UK and European competition law can have serious consequences, involving fines or orders to divest interests.
Breach of the European and UK prohibitions on anti-competitive agreements and on the abuse of a dominant position can result in each party to the agreement or arrangement, or the party abusing its dominant position, being liable to a fine of up to 10% of its group turnover. Under UK law, turnover normally means the UK turnover in the last financial year but can include turnover in the previous 2 years if the breach extends back that far. Under European law, the maximum fine is Euros 1 million, or the previous year's worldwide group turnover, whichever is the higher.
Both the Office of Fair Trading in the UK and the European Commission in Europe have extremely wide-ranging powers to investigate suspected breaches and officials can enter premises and seize relevant documents.
Some examples of recent work are:
- Acting for the oil exploration multi-national Schlumberger in a UK merger application where clearance was granted subject to a limited divestment programme.
- Advising on the competition/antitrust aspects of other UK mergers and acquisitions.
- Advising on the competition/antitrust aspects of agency, distribution and franchising agreements.
- Advising a US manufacturer alleging that it was the victim of abusive practices by dominant enterprises.
- Acting for various clients in relation to anti-competitive agreements.
- Acting for a European producer of fashion products on the application of a selective distribution system.
- Advice on the competition/antitrust aspects of joint ventures to set up internet markets in the aerospace industry.
- Advising on when and in what circumstances parallel imports are permitted.
- Advising on market definition to establish whether there was market dominance.