O'Melveny & Myers LLP

O'Melveny & Myers' global antitrust group ranks among the world's largest competition practices. Its 82-strong team includes five Who's Who nominees – including practice heads Timothy Muris and Richard Parker.

O'Melveny & Myers LLP

The firm's most important antitrust client is software company Advanced Micro Devices. O'Melveny is AMD's global competition counsel and continues to represent it in one of the world's longest-running antitrust battles – against rival Intel. AMD alleges that Intel has monopolised the x86 microprocessor industry worldwide by engaging in a campaign to coerce customers to refrain from dealing with AMD. In addition, O'Melveny has represented AMD in investigations by several antitrust agencies, including regulators in the US, South Korea, Japan and the EU.

Another key client is Chemtura Corporation. O'Melveny represented it in a landmark decision in New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals. The court held that treble damages actions may not proceed as class actions under New York's antitrust law.

In Europe, meanwhile, O'Melveny advised travel company TUI on its proposed merger with First Choice. The firm secured a phase II merger clearance decision for TUI, despite the deal reducing the number of major vertically integrated travel groups in the UK from three to two, following the virtually simultaneous merger between Thomas Cook and MyTravel. O'Melveny also obtained clearances for the TUI merger in the US and China.

In the US, meanwhile, it advised the Jean Coutu Group on the sale of its Brooks and Eckert drugstores to Rite Aid. The US$3.4 billion deal created the largest drugstore chain on the East Coast. After a nine-month investigation, the FTC required the parties to divest just 23 drugstores of a combined 5,160 stores.

Another high-profile case that O'Melveny worked on this year was Norsk Hydro's merger with Statoil ASA. The merger of these two companies' oil and gas activities was worth an estimated US$30 billion and created one of the largest offshore oil and gas operators in the world. O'Melveny handled the global antitrust issues and successfully obtained phase I clearance without undertakings in Europe and the US.

O'Melveny also advised Western Digital Corp, a leading manufacturer of hard drives used in computers and other electronic devices. It made a US$1 billion tender offer for Komag Inc, one of the most important suppliers to the hard-drive industry. O'Melveny obtained timely clearance from the FTC and also filed the deal in Beijing.