White & Case

White & Case takes fourth place in our Global Elite rankings for the second year in a row. Led by partner J Mark Gidley, the firm’s sizable global antitrust practice is one of the biggest and best in the world. The team is packed full of ex-enforcers, including former Department of Justice alumni John H Chung and John D Donaldson, as well as Gidley himself who served as acting assistant attorney general between 1992 and 1993. The firm recently hired partner Jérémie Marthan from Linklaters in Paris but lost Kate Dyson to Alexion Pharmaceuticals.

The firm has a stellar behavioural practice, working at the heart of some blockbuster antitrust cases in the tech and pharmaceuticals markets. The firm is co-counsel to Google in its appeal before the EU General Court against the European Commission’s €4.3 billion Android fine. The appeal hearing was held in September 2021 and a judgment is pending. In another headline-grabbing Big Tech case, the team advised Amazon in its appeal against the EU competition authority’s decision to open an investigation into its “Buy Box” feature while carving out the Italian market from its probe to preserve a parallel investigation by the Italian antitrust enforcer. 

The firm also continues to advise on significant cases in the pharmaceutical sector. It is co-counsel to Pfizer as the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority reinvestigates the drug maker for allegedly charging excessive prices for an anti-epilepsy medication. The agency re-accused Pfizer of abuse of dominance in August 2021 after the Competition Appeal Tribunal ordered the CMA to redo parts of its initial probe. The competition group is also representing Servier in its appeal to the European Court of Justice against the EU competition enforcer’s pay-for-delay fine, which was reduced by €100 million by the EU General Court in 2018.

On the merger control side, the firm advised the majority of Deliveroo’s investors on Amazon’s acquisition of a minority stake in the food delivery app. The UK team secured unconditional approval from the CMA in August 2020 after it was brought in to advise on the deal once the agency launched its Phase II review. The team also advises Kobalt Music Group in its acquisition by Sony, which is facing merger reviews in the US, the EU and the UK. The CMA opened a Phase II probe into the deal in September 2021 and the US Federal Trade Commission sought additional information from the merging parties in April 2021.

In private litigation work, the team successfully persuaded the US banking regulator to drop all Shearman Act charges against former Citigroup trader Richard Usher in August 2020 for his alleged role in the alleged manipulation of the US dollar and euro exchange currency markets. The case was the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s first-ever contested antitrust case and followed a New York federal jury’s acquittal of Usher and fellow ex-traders Rohan Ramchandani and Christopher Ashton in 2018. The team also defends Pfizer in several litigation cases relating to alleged pay-for-delay infringements and illegal monopolisation in the market for epinephrine auto-injectors.