With decades of experience in all aspects of public and private competition litigation, Cleary Gottlieb represents leading international companies in a comprehensive range of contentious competition matters across all major sectors.

As one of the first major U.S. firms to establish a presence in Europe over 75 years ago, we provide clients the benefit of long-established, leading competition and litigation practices across the United Kingdom and Europe, with deep local experience in each of the jurisdictions where we have offices.

Consistent success in landmark cases. We regularly represent clients before EU and national courts on the full range of EU and national competition issues, including stand-alone and follow-on damages actions, collective proceedings and representative actions, and appeals against European Commission and national regulatory decisions. Several of these cases have resulted in landmark judgments at EU and national level.

An integrated, global outlook. Our integrated practice encompasses competition litigation matters that arise in multiple jurisdictions, where we leverage best-in-class teams from our leading global antitrust and litigation practices.

Deep experience and creative strategies. With an unparalleled depth of internationally-ranked antitrust and litigation lawyers – including colleagues who have worked at the European Courts, and former senior officials from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority – we develop proactive strategies, with a global, results-driven outlook.

Notable Experience

Private Damages Litigation

  • Amazon in defense of collective proceedings before the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal relating to the retail sale of Apple products.

  • Google in a number of standalone and follow-on cases, defending against injunction requests and damages claims before the French courts, based on decisions of EU or French Competition Authorities, including in the largest damages claim ever filed against it in Europe.

  • Goldman Sachs in claims by 175 financial institutions before the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal alleging breaches of competition law in connection with alleged FX manipulation.

  • Beiersdorf and Henkel in numerous antitrust damages proceedings pending before, inter alia, the courts of Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, Kiel, Nuremberg and Stuttgart based on a cartel decision issued by the German Federal Cartel Office (Drugstore Products)

  • LG Display in only the third fully-litigated cartel damages trial in England and subsequent proceedings before the Court of Appeal.

  • Lundbeck in a claim for damages by the UK Department of Health arising out of agreements relating to the anti-depressant citalopram, including in Court of Appeal proceedings relating to limitation.

  • Air Liquide in cartel damages litigation brought by SPV CDC (Cartel Damages Claims) before the Dortmund court following the EU Commission’s cartel decision in the case Hydrogen Peroxide, a case that was also referred to the European Court of Justice to issue a landmark ruling on jurisdictional questions.

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Public Enforcement Litigation

  • Illumina in proceedings before the European Court of Justice concerning the application of Article 22 EUMR.

  • NVIDIA in proceedings before the EU General Court and European Court of Justice relating to predatory pricing.

  • Google in proceedings before the EU General Court and European Court of Justice relating to Google Shopping and Google Android.

  • BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole in proceedings against the European Central Bank leading to an annulment of the decisions of the European Central Bank (ECB) to refuse to allow six French credit institutions to benefit from an exemption.

  • Lundbeck in an appeal before the EU Court of Justice against the EU Commission’s €94 million fine in relation to patent settlement agreements concerning citalopram.

  • Ryanair in c. 60 appeals before the EU General Court and the Court of Justice against EC decisions concerning Covid-related aid to certain airlines. The cases already decided have led to nine annulment judgments for a total amount of aid of c. EUR 25 billion (including aid to Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, SAS, Condor and TAP).

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