IFLR 1000
The Guide to the World's Leading Financial Law Firms

The European competition arena has seen some notable activity and developments in the last 12 months and firms notice a different flavour to the Commission under its new head Joaquín Almunia."Almunia is bright, very different from his predecessor, a more macroeconomic approach, spending more time on issues to resolve cases and the tone is very different, more pragmatic," says one partner....

The European competition arena has seen some notable activity and developments in the last 12 months and firms notice a different flavour to the Commission under its new head Joaquín Almunia.

"Almunia is bright, very different from his predecessor, a more macroeconomic approach, spending more time on issues to resolve cases and the tone is very different, more pragmatic," says one partner. Consensus is that the commission has narrowed its focus but deepened its investigations into each case. Through 2010, the commission also implemented new settlement procedures and has been tweaking guidelines on collective redress, horizontal agreements and information exchange.

Merger activity was lower than in the past, though firms note that strategic mergers and acquisitions have been alive and kicking, while private equity only started to revive in mid-2011. Europe however saw some large and interesting M&A referred to the commission, notably McAfee's acquisition of Intel, International Power's joint-venture with EDF Energy, Merck's acquisition of Millipore, Sun Microsystem's acquisition of Oracle, Solvay's acquisition of Rhodia and the looming merger of the NYSE and Deutsche Borse.

The cartel side provided a lot of work, with EU Commission investigations into the air freight market, LCD screens, online search marketing, detergents and the banana market in particular producing a glut of cases.

Private damages claims have also produced a substantial amount of work. "Private enforcement and damage claims, it is only over last one or two years that these cases are starting to become really routine... over the last year I can't think of any cartel case we were involved in that did not have a private damage angle," says one peer.

The new settlement procedure was tested in a number of cases, namely by Toshiba, Infineon Technologies and NEC Corporation. Some partners argue that the incentive to settle still needs to be increased for the system to work properly. As it stands parties can achieve a 10% reduction in fines if they admit liability and settle, when in many cases this just is not worth it.

In the legal market itself, the dissolution of tier two ranked firm Howrey has been the biggest development. Partners have been distributed around the market benefiting a number of firms.