Our Competition and Regulatory Group deals with the full range of competition law work and a variety of sectoral regulatory regimes.

It is led by three partners; Gordon Downie, Richard Cockburn and John Schmidt, all of whom are recognised as leading experts by Legal 500 and Chambers. They are supported by a further 10 competition specialists spread across all of the firm's four UK offices (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Edinburgh). In Brussels we have a facility within the Scotland Europa centre providing the infrastructure for cases before the European Commission.

Our Group works across the full range of competition law and regulatory regimes and has a particular track record of the following:

• Merger control - advising on notification requirements to the European Commission, Office of Fair Trading and other national authorities for mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures.
• Cartels and leniency applications - advising companies in cartel investigations, leniency applications and any follow-on proceedings.
• Contentious proceedings and damages actions - advising companies that have suffered from cartels or bid-rigging in recovering damages arising from cartel activities.
• Competition Investigations - representing companies in competition and regulatory proceedings before UK authorities and the European Commission.
• Public procurement and state aid - advising companies and public authorities on public procurement and state aid issues both on a transactional and on a retained basis.

In addition, the team provides regular updates to clients and contacts through our E-Bulletin service that keeps them informed about developments in competition law and best practice and our Cartel Alerts summarises the larger current EU and UK cases that are likely to be subject to follow on claims.

Our competition and regulatory advice covers areas such as:

• Advising on competition law aspects of complex contractual arrangements.
• Obtaining UK and EU clearances for mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and public offers.
• Handling contentious proceedings such as complaints to the Office of Fair Trading and the European Commission and litigation before the Courts in England and Scotland.
• Advising on cartels, monopoly infringements and leniency applications.
• Bringing and defending actions for damages resulting from cartel activities.
• Advising on public procurement and state aid.
• Supporting the establishment and maintenance of compliance and training programmes.

The following is a selection of our clients:

• BAT
• Chivas Brothers
• COLT Telecom Group
• Fidelity Investment
• Invitrogen
• National Australia Group
• Pernod Ricard
• Pickfords
• ProStrakan Group
• Scottish & Newcastle UK
• Scottish Power
• TEVA Pharmaceuticals
• Thus
• Total
• Water Industry Commission for Scotland

“'Increasingly setting its sights on the London corporate market,'…The firm’s celebrated M&A practice also continues to provide significant leverage to the competition group."
Chambers 2008