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Cartels & Government Investigations

With cartel prosecutions at an all-time high, the number of countries making cartel enforcement a priority continues to increase each year. Antitrust enforcers are increasingly coordinating their efforts internationally, often conducting simultaneous dawn raids in multiple countries. The combination of Shearman & Sterling’s vast cartel experience and our global presence have positioned us to provide clients with swift, coordinated and effective global representation against allegations of cartel behavior.

We continue to be involved in many of the most significant cartel cases prosecuted by the US Department of Justice and European Commission in recent years, including:

• Air cargo
• Dynamic random access memory (DRAM)
• Graphite electrodes
• Vitamins

Winning Track Record. Over the past 10 years, we have represented clients in more than 20 major criminal antitrust investigations in the United States and have been successful in defending our clients (no indictments/no guilty pleas) in over 75 percent of them. In Europe, we have a long history of defending parties in cartel and abuse of dominance proceedings before the European Commission and national regulators. We have defended corporations and their officials as counsel in European Commission proceedings, as well as serving as international coordinating counsel in multi-jurisdictional actions.

Our presence in key antitrust jurisdictions and our experience in dealing with all the major competition authorities are important assets to clients who are seeking a coordinated defense in multinational investigations or in handling simultaneous dawn raids by multiple enforcement agencies.

Illustrative Recent Experience

Cartels & Government Investigations Representations:

• Cargolux in parallel investigations by the US Department of Justice, European Commission and multiple other regulators into an alleged international price-fixing cartel in the air cargo sector
• Thomson Reuters in an alleged abuse of dominance investigation conducted by the European Commission
• Ciba in the European Commission’s investigation of alleged price fixing in the heat-stabilizer industry
• BASF, the world’s second largest producer of vitamins, in the US Department of Justice’s investigation of an alleged international price fixing cartel in the vitamin industry
• SGL Carbon in the US Department of Justice’s investigation of an alleged international price fixing cartel in the graphite electrodes industry
• A senior executive of Hynix Semiconductor in the DOJ investigation into alleged cartel conduct in the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) industry

View additional cartels & government investigations experience

View private antitrust litigation experience