Professional notice
Canada
The competition team at STIKEMAN ELLIOTT is headed up by partner Michael Kilby, who leads a team of six other partners, four counsel and nine associates. Former associate Michael Laskey was promoted to partner in January 2020, while former Davies associate David Feldman joined the firm in June 2019.
The firm says it was instructed as counsel in five of the 10 transactions that the Bureau reviewed in-depth in the 2019–2020 fiscal year. It also says it represented clients in more than half of the mergers that the Bureau issued a position statement on between 2018 and 2020, reflecting the most important and interesting transactions under review. Ongoing deal work includes acting for Air Canada on its purchase of rival Air Transat, which is currently undergoing an in-depth review by the Bureau. The team also advised Bayer on the sale of its animal health business to Elanco, which was approved with remedies. The firm represented TC Energy Corporation in the sale of its interests in three Ontario natural gas-fired power plants to a subsidiary of Ontario Power Generation for approximately €1.8 billion.
Stikeman represents Sobeys in a class action related to the Bureau’s investigation into an alleged 14-year price-fixing conspiracy among all the country’s major bread suppliers and retailers. The competition team also defends Hitachi Chemical in multiple class action suits, in which it is accused of participating in a cartel for the manufacture and sale of capacitors.
Stikeman Elliott’s Competition & Foreign Investment Group provides high quality and pragmatic legal services to advance client goals on major national and international transactions, as well as day-to-day compliance across all industries. On the litigation side, the team handles high stakes exposures in the criminal, regulatory and class action spheres, using dynamic and highly effective courtroom advocacy and a razor-sharp strategic approach.
The firm is one of the most active transactional law firms in Canada, and holds a deep understanding of the competitive dynamics of Canada’s major industrial and commercial sectors. As such, they can effectively evaluate and structure transactions to manage the risk of regulatory intervention by the Commissioner of Competition and other governmental agencies. The team, which includes Paul Collins, Michael Kilby and Michael Laskey in Toronto, has acted on the most noteworthy foreign investment transactions in recent years, representing both Canadian targets and foreign purchasers. Susan Hutton and Lawson Hunter also have highly active regulatory practices in the firm’s Ottawa office.
Stikeman Elliott’s award winning-competition litigation (awarded Litigation Law Firm of the Year) practice is a recognized market leader, with top ranked counsel including Katherine Kay (described as “arguably the best competition litigator Canada has to offer” in a past GCR Country Survey), and internationally-ranked Eliot Kolers and Danielle Royal handling the full spectrum of client issues, from cartel investigations, prosecutions and resolutions, to immunity and leniency applications, to contested mergers and other civilly reviewable matters before the Competition Tribunal, to defence of class actions and other lawsuits alleging competition law violations and economic torts. The team's reputation for vigorous advocacy and strategic focus on our clients’ interests, in the courtroom and at the negotiating table, serves clients as they face the Competition Bureau, Public Prosecution Service of Canada, and class action plaintiffs.