Latham & Watkins LLP

The firm: Latham & Watkins is a leading international law firm serving multinational companies, start-ups, investment banks, private equity funds, venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds, governments and other organisations. The firm’s global platform spans Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the US, and consists of internationally recognised practices across a wide spectrum of transactional, litigation, corporate and regulatory areas. Latham’s lawyers offer unrivalled legal resources and strategic commercial thinking to provide clients with innovative solutions to complex business and legal matters.

Latham & Watkins’ Brussels office is the hub for the firm’s European competition practice, a practice consisting of more than 50 lawyers in the major jurisdictions in Europe. This team is part of Latham’s global antitrust practice group, which includes more than 100 US antitrust lawyers in three offices and a team in Asia. This global footprint, top-notch team of Brussels professionals and a premier practice in the US combine to provide clients with unsurpassed service and deep insight into the workings of the regulatory authorities and courts. Latham & Watkins’ Brussels office is a market leader among the truly international law firms.

Areas of practice: Lawyers in Latham’s Brussels office handle the most pressing competition law needs for top companies around the world, including global cartel defence and litigation, complex merger clearances, and a range of cutting-edge alleged abuse of dominance and state aid matters that will set the legal standard for cases to come. It is also handling an ever increasing amount of litigation before the European and national courts, including civil damages actions.

Latham’s global platform and its considerable strength in both the US and Europe, as well as its cross-disciplinary approach combining antitrust/competition law experts with best-in-class white-collar criminal defence experts and class action expertise make it one of the very few firms able to give clients the integrated defence needed in global cartel enforcement. The firm’s experience across jurisdictions and disciplines has provided Latham with leading global expertise to handle these matters as they have spread beyond the EU, US, Canada and Japan to cover countries such as Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and South Africa. The resources the firm is able to bring to bear allow it to handle cases involving a complex and simultaneous array of criminal prosecutions, civil investigations and private damages actions in multiple countries.

Latham’s lawyers regularly handle proposed mergers that present challenging competition issues and receive the closest scrutiny by the European Commission, EU member states and jurisdictions around the world. Its clients benefit from Latham’s lawyers’ deep knowledge of the complex legal and economic principles, along with their unsurpassed experience with the evolving regulatory approaches in Europe, the US and around the world. Latham is one of only a handful of firms with the experience, capability and global footprint to secure merger clearances worldwide, with competition lawyers based in the major financial markets in Europe, the US and Asia. Contributing to their success is the firm’s leading corporate practice, which routinely garners top-ten rankings in the American Lawyer corporate score card year over year.

Latham’s Brussels lawyers also assist clients with regulatory issues such as data protection, environmental law, energy regulation, financial services, pharmaceutical and product safety.