Your challenges
With the competition authorities becoming ever more active in all sectors, our clients are telling us that competition compliance is moving rapidly up the business agenda. For businesses that get in wrong, the consequences can be severe, including imprisonment for directors and senior managers, disqualification of directors, fines of up to 10 per cent of worldwide turnover and third-party compensation claims.
Achieving your ambitions
The good news is that having a robust compliance programme will help your business to avoid the competition law pitfalls. And, even if the worst does happen, genuine efforts to implement a suitable compliance programme will be a mitigating factor when the authorities come to set a fine.
We have experience of working with a wide range of businesses to develop and implement compliance programmes which are tailored to their individual requirements. Compliance should be more than about saying “no”. We take a practical commercial approach to all advice we provide, so will focus as much on what your business can do as on what it cannot.
The strength you need
A team of three partners and three other lawyers advises on competition law, compliance and State Aid.
We are currently acting for clients involved in two of the OFT’s most high-profile enquiries to date (bid-rigging in the construction industry and grocery supplies). We have developed and implemented competition compliance programmes for a range of clients, including a food manufacturer and a consumer goods supplier and have acted for a client in the packaging industry during an OFT dawn raid.
The team regularly advises clients on structuring commercial arrangements to avoid competition law issues. We have recently advised a client in the electronic publishing sector on pricing strategies that avoid the risk of price fixing and have advised a truck distributor and a motor insurer on the application of the Motor Vehicles Block Exemption to their businesses.
Lawyers you can trust
Our team is highly rated in Legal 500 for EU, State Aid and EC procurement work.