About Natalie Greenwood Natalie Greenwood is a partner at Euclid Law with over 18 years’ experience advising on all aspects of EU and UK competition law. Natalie is dual-qualified in England & Wales and Spain and advises on a broad range of matters including cartels, mergers, joint ventures, distribution issues, behavioural antitrust, foreign direct investment and competition litigation. Natalie joined Euclid Law in 2019 after 5 years’ working in an in-house competition legal team and, prior to that, for a Magic Circle law firm. About Euclid Law Euclid Law is a boutique law firm focusing only on competition law and foreign direct investment. With offices in London and Brussels, in-depth experience and a network of contacts in key jurisdictions around the world, Euclid Law has the ability to advise clients across Europe and beyond on all aspects of competition law and foreign direct investment. Contact Natalie Greenwood Partner, Euclid Law 34 Settles Street, London, E1 1JP, UK Tel: + 44 20 3816 3913 E: natalie.greenwood@euclid-law.eu www.euclid-law.eu collective actions that aggregate the damages claims by affected parties against a particular business found to have infringed competition law. An increasing number of European countries are introducing collective actions, making it easier for these types of claims to be launched. For example, in addition to the nearly €3 billion in fines from the Commission for the truck makers in the trucks cartel, these manufacturers are now facing damages actions in the billions brought by their customers who are seeking money back for any overcharge resulting from the cartel in a number of European countries, including the UK, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. Can you explain the role of leniency programs in EU cartel investigations? Cartels tend to be secret agreements, which means that it is difficult for competition authorities to detect them. To combat this issue, leniency programmes offer companies involved in a cartel that bring this to the attention of the authorities and hand over evidence either total immunity from fines (if the company is the first to ‘blow the whistle’) or a reduction in fines, with lower reductions in fines available for subsequent leniency applicants. However, as a result of the growth in private damages claims which may result in leniency applicants having to pay large sums to their customers for cartel participation, as well as the growth in cartel enforcement worldwide, the leniency incentives may not be as clear-cut for firms as they previously seemed. What would your first advice be for a company that is facing down a newly launched cartel investigation? My first advice would be to take it seriously and engage good lawyers! Senior management attention and support is paramount, together with a small team that can take decisions on the day-to-day matters and escalate strategic decisions quickly and appropriately. There will be many strategic decisions to be taken early on. If you are being dawn raided, it is possible that there is already a leniency applicant that will benefit from total immunity. However, you may still be able to apply for leniency and receive significant fine reductions, but only if you admit liability and are able to provide the competition authority with ‘significant added value’ compared to what a competition authority already has at the time of submission. The earlier you provide this information, the more likely you are to be earlier in the ‘leniency queue’ and benefit from greater reductions in fines. You will therefore need to get a good grasp of your company’s role in any potential infringement quickly to feed into early strategic decisions. However, prevention is better than cure. Make sure your business is aware of competition law with regular training, in particular in any high-risk areas where contact with competitors is frequent – and ensure that your business knows how to react in the event of a dawn raid. 1https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/5c9a1b27e5274a3cab0beb97/Fender_Europe_ Penalty_Notice__26_March_2019__FINAL__Redacted.pdf 2https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/acm-has-imposedfine-184-million-euros-deleting-whatsapp-chatconversations-during-dawn-raid EXPERT INSIGHT 43 Make sure your business is aware of competition law with regular training.
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