Antitrust and Competition

• Intel in its $16.7 billion acquisition of chipmaker Altera.
• Hewlett-Packard in its $3 billion acquisition of Aruba Networks.
• Norbord in its $600 million acquisition of Ainsworth, which created the world’s largest manufacturer of oriented strandboard.
• AT&T in its acquisition of DirecTV.
• AECOM in its $6 billion acquisition of URS.
• A joint venture creating the world’s largest shipping liner consortium, which required antitrust work in 22 jurisdictions.
• Tenet Healthcare in its formation of an historic $2 billion joint venture resulting in the largest ever acquisition of outpatient surgery centers.
• Tenet Healthcare in its $1.7 billion acquisition of Vanguard Health Systems.
• Ameristar in its $2.8 billion sale to Pinnacle Entertainment.
• Matson in its $500 million acquisition of Horizon.

Gibson Dunn frequently represents its clients in follow-on treble damage civil litigation spawned by government investigations.  Cases have included the following industries and areas:

• Liquid crystal display
• Cathode ray tubes
• Dynamic random-access memory
• Static random-access memory
• London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR)
• Freight forwarding
• Hawaii-Guam cabotage
• Urethane
• Air cargo shipping services
• Rubber chemicals

Across the European Union, we represent clients in a range of industries in cartel investigations by the EU and various Member States.  These include price-fixing investigations by the German Federal Cartel Office and Germany’s biggest resale price maintenance investigation in history, which covers the entire food and beverages sector.  The wide spectrum of client industries includes:

• Technology, media and telecommunications (TMT)
• Consumer goods
• Display devices
• Power cables
• Engineering
• Liner shipping

Gibson Dunn’s European antitrust and competition lawyers are based in our offices in Brussels, London, Munich and Paris.  They work closely with our leading U.S. antitrust and competition practice to service the firm’s clients on all aspects of European Union and EU national competition law, including competition advocacy.

Our Brussels office, which marked its 10-year anniversary in 2014, serves as the hub of the antitrust and competition group in Europe and, in close coordination with the firm’s other global offices, provides the excellence and distinctive added value sought by our clients.  Our offices have coordinated a number of large and successful representations of clients involved in international merger and joint venture transactions, cartel investigations, abusive behavior investigations and complex international distribution and licensing arrangements.  International corporations, industry associations and government agencies regularly turn to our lawyers for strategic advice and representation on sophisticated matters with a multinational dimension that require the particular insight, technical skills and knowledge of the complex Brussels decision-making process for which our team has become well known.

Clients also frequently come to us for advice on the EU issues affecting their strategic market interests or business models, and the team has a successful record of converting the most difficult competition regulatory challenges into opportunities.  Whether working on an innovative monopolization defense (“abuse of dominance” in the EU), a complex merger review, a sweeping cartel investigation, the development of a sophisticated pan-European sales channel or the exploration of the interfaces between antitrust rules and intellectual property or sector-specific regulation, we have an established record of adopting forward-looking approaches that allow our clients to make informed choices at each critical stage of the relevant procedure.

Recent representations include:

• Representing ICOMP, a leading industry association dealing with online commerce and antitrust, data protection and intellectual property issues, including in a number of antitrust proceedings initiated by the European Commission concerning Google.  The Commission’s investigation of Google, of global importance and the most high-profile matter of 2015, is a landmark case for the application of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) in the Internet economy.
• Defending EXSYM Corporation and its part-parent SWCC Showa Holdings Company, Ltd. in the European Commission’s investigation into price-fixing and market sharing in the high and ultra-high voltage power cables sector.
• Representing a number of internationally renowned brand names on licensing and distribution arrangements in Europe, on the open EC consultations concerning the Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (TTBER), the European Commission’s competition rules for the assessment of technology transfer agreements, digital agenda and compliance with the EU’s emerging policies on e-commerce.
• Representing clients in a broad variety of sectors (such as energy, infrastructure, TMT and transport) in complex State aid and public procurement cases before the European Commission.
• Representing some of the world’s leading players in the financial services sector in matters that include the LIBOR and credit default swaps (CDS) competition law investigations, major EU merger filings in the insurance sector and a national filing in Poland regarding local money lending.  In connection with these representations, the Brussels office has developed a very broad-ranging regulatory practice covering all aspects of the financial services sector that includes insurance, reinsurance, the regulation of CDS and the obligations of credit ratings agencies.
• Providing advisory services to various energy sector stakeholders regarding all key aspects of the EU regulatory framework and State aids policy that apply to the sector, including the details of the 2nd & 3rd Energy Liberalization Package, Renewables, Emissions Trading System and Carbon Capture and Storage.
• Handling numerous cases in the TMT sector, especially in relation to abusive practices, the development of regulatory policy, the representation of increasingly more clients in mergers falling under the EU Merger Regulation and national merger rules in complex cases, and the provision of advice relating to EU and Member State data protection rules.
• Secured major settlements for telecommunications sector clients, notably Netia (Poland’s largest alternative fixed-line telecommunications operator) and Si.mobil (Slovenia’s second largest mobile operator) in two separate follow-on actions arising from actions brought under Article 102 TFEU for refusal to deal and predatory pricing/margin squeezing.
• Successfully defended the specialist software manufacturer MathWorks in a complaint brought by a competitor under Article 102 TFEU for its alleged refusal to license.
• Represented Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Ltd. in the European Commission’s European LCD, and TV & Computer Monitor Tubes investigations.

• Representing numerous major companies in merger filings.
• Acting as European competition counsel to MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A on the establishment of the biggest liner shipping cooperative arrangement in history, a long-term operational alliance on East-West trades called the 2M network.
• Represented Schlumberger Limited, a global oilfield services provider, as antitrust counsel in a subsea joint venture with Cameron International, a major subsea equipment supplier.  Clearance was obtained in the United States (after a two-month DOJ investigation) and from Brazil’s antitrust authority (CADE), the European Commission and China’s MOFCOM.