Anti-competitive Conduct

Anti-competitive conduct, including business practices, can trigger government investigations and often private and public litigation. Issues include price fixing allegations; cartel, collusion or coordinated activities among firms often leading to class action cases; price gouging allegations; alleged monopolization and allegations of dominance and market power; and business practices such as non-compete contracts or exclusivity. Other contexts in which business practices could raise concerns and investigations or roles in evaluation of consent decrees include vertical arrangements between suppliers and customers or vertical transactions with theories of foreclosure and competitive effects. Companies, law firms and enforcement agencies rely on FTI Consulting experts to evaluate the justification and effects of an action and to assist in the evaluation of whether it violates the law. We help clients enhance compliance processes to prevent misconduct and to assess defensible responses during regulatory investigations to mitigate legal and business risks, including damages liability or reputational damage.

How We Help

Clients call on our senior practitioners for expert advice and testimony in some of the largest, most complex antitrust and competition matters in the world. Our senior expert team includes former law enforcement officers and investigators, forensic accountants, legal practitioners, damages experts, industrial organization economists, technology experts, reputation specialists and corporate finance consultants. We are renowned for developing a comprehensive understanding of industries and business practices and their effects on competition and efficient market operations, as well as for conducting econometric and empirical analyses and making such analyses understandable to fact finders. Our experience includes assessing allegations of anticompetitive agreements between competitors, such as price fixing; information sharing and market sharing arrangements (horizontal agreements); anticompetitive agreements between suppliers and customers, such as tying, selective distribution, exclusive supply and resale price maintenance (vertical agreements); monopolization and attempted monopolization; exclusionary conduct through tying and bundling, predatory pricing, conditional rebates or other pricing arrangements; and exploitative conduct, excessive pricing and unfair trading. These issues and investigations extend to virtually all industries and geographies, including the largest, newest and most complex industries.

Competition cases can fundamentally affect a business’s license to operate, subsequent regulatory reviews and legislation. Taking a proactive position, we understand the importance of developing and monitoring government-mandated compliance programs, and the advantages of using data analytics and e-discovery techniques for proactive or retrospective evaluation. When a government agency requests that a company create a data-based compliance program, we’re often called upon to help develop and implement robust programs and policies. If required, we can also help set up government-appointed monitorships and have the capabilities to either oversee the monitorship or act as the monitor.

Protecting a corporate reputation in the face of allegations or findings of anticompetitive practices can be challenging. Clients engage our strategic communications advisers, which include former policymakers, regulators, press secretaries and government spokespersons, reporters and lawyers, many of whom have unique expertise on antitrust policy and regulations. Collectively, we help corporations effectively communicate to a diverse group of stakeholders and avoid pitfalls in the existing geopolitical environment. Working alongside corporations and their counsel pursuing deals or facing antitrust investigations, we ensure that regulatory review is conducted with our clients’ perspectives top of mind, mitigating false narratives and outside influence.