Williams & Connolly frequently represents both individuals and foreign and domestic corporations in criminal antitrust investigations in the United States and abroad. The firm has been involved in many of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s largest investigations, including industry investigations of the airlines, freight forwarders, auto parts manufacturers, polyester staple manufacturers, municipal bond traders, refrigerant compressor manufacturers, micro processing chip manufacturers, auction houses, defense contractors, plastics makers and graphite electrode manufacturers, among others. These investigations are often international in scope, and firm lawyers have experience working with clients, lawyers and competition authorities in many parts of the world, including in the European Union and its member nations, Japan, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, and Mexico. Williams & Connolly lawyers also regularly represent these same clients in all aspects of related civil antitrust litigation.
Representative Experience
Though all cases vary and none is predictive recent representations include:
- Representing a global automotive parts company in a DOJ and worldwide investigation of price-fixing and bid-rigging.
- Representing one of the largest national food-purchasing cooperatives in a major DOJ criminal case involving alleged price-fixing by food suppliers.
- Representing a leading technology company in a criminal investigation by the DOJ’s Antitrust Division concerning employment practices.
- Lead counsel for a manufacturing company in a grand jury investigation of the MDI industry.
- Representing individual employees of international auto parts manufacturers in the DOJ’s criminal antitrust investigation of the auto parts industry with respect to allegations of price fixing and market allocation.
- Representing an international bank in DOJ and SEC investigations into alleged bid-rigging and other price-fixing conduct with respect to the provision of certain investment products.
- Representing an executive at a multinational energy company in connection with an international criminal antitrust investigation into alleged bid-rigging.
- Lead counsel for former employees of several major financial institutions, including a senior bond trader, in connection with global, cross-border investigations by the DOJ and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission into alleged manipulation of LIBOR, FX, and other benchmark rates.
- Representing the CEO of a financial-services company in a criminal investigation by DOJ’s Antitrust Division concerning employment practices.