Competition, foreign investment and subsidy control

Our specialist lawyers can support you to navigate the complexities of competition/antitrust law

Competition/antitrust law and foreign investment regimes impact how businesses trade, their terms with consumers, mergers and acquisitions. Subsidy control law governs how taxpayer’s money are used to support businesses.

Competition law impacts on all areas of the economy and the regulatory environment is becoming increasingly complex. Merger control and foreign investment rules can impact on many types of corporate transaction, including joint ventures, and some transactions will require clearance before they can be implemented. Some regulatory authorities also have the power to call in transactions for investigation.

We assist you by advising on whether your transaction will trigger any filing requirements and, if so, we work with you to formulate the most appropriate strategy for achieving clearances.

Breaches of competition rules can lead to the imposition of significant fines, criminal sanctions, director disqualification and bad publicity, and take up inordinate amounts of management time that can be better spent elsewhere. We work with you to achieve your business goals within the rules.

Our experience

We've advised a leading UK higher education provider on the merger control strategy of its acquisition of a similar but smaller provider, including drafting responses ready for any CMA enquiry
We're advising another UK university on the legality of a restrictive covenant in its agreement with a student residence developer, particularly the enforceability of an accommodation demand test.
We've worked with a major private hospital operator to ensure three new joint ventures with referring clinicians comply with the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order
We've helped a national financial services client run a mock CMA dawn raid to check and approve its response procedures
We've advised a regional funeral director with its responses and contributions to the CMA’s market investigation into the funeral market
We've advised a major care homes provider on its terms of business with clients following the CMA’s market study in that sector
We've worked with the British Council on the state aid and competition issues arising from its status and funding
Our subsidy control and state aid advice has assisted a number of clients to produce successful, subsidy control compliant, ERDF / Local Growth Fund / Research Partnership Investment Fund grant and loan applications
We've advised a local enterprise partnership client on the state aid compliance of a £15m grant application for a sports innovation campus

Did you know?

£100m

Each year we help our clients successfully apply for over £100m of public grants.

209,000 students

Have been affected by the merger of two higher education providers which we advised on.

Competition investigation

We represented two construction clients at short notice on a dawn raid and advised them through any ensuing enforcement action taken by the CMA.

Our clients

We've worked with a wide range of clients on the impact of competition law, including:

UK and overseas private companies
NHS trusts
Universities
Local enterprise partnerships
Central UK government departments

Our lawyers

We advise on:

How competition law applies to agreements, commercial agreements and trading practices
Merger control
Foreign investment rules; the National Security and Investment Act 2021
Compliance programs and training
Fair consumer terms
Market studies and investigations
Cartel / anti-trust investigations
Dawn raids
Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order
Subsidy control