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Competition, Marketing & Foreign Investment


Compete to win.
With more former enforcers than any other Canadian law firm, no team is better equipped to help you succeed before competition, consumer protection and foreign investment authorities. And when necessary, we vigorously defend regulatory enforcement and private litigation.
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Overview

Your business focus is on growth, development and sustainability—key strategies you intend to implement will impact your customers, suppliers or competitors—and may result in enhanced scrutiny by competition authorities. To promptly and appropriately navigate and address these challenges the Competition, Marketing & Foreign Investment (CMFI) team at Fasken stands ready to help you get the best outcome, through timely and practical advice.

Leading companies around the world look to us for competition law advice on their daily operations and their most significant commercial transactions. Our lawyers have vast experience in all aspects of competition, marketing and foreign investment law. We are regularly retained to advise on and represent multinational corporations (MNCs) in the Canadian and South African aspects of global mergers and acquisitions. We also defend clients in domestic and cross-border competition investigations and prosecutions, as well as private actions, including class actions. Our clients operate in various sectors, including information technology, telecommunications, transportation, pharmaceutical, financial services, agricultural, food, consumer electronics, automotive, mining, energy, manufacturing and retail.

Our practical and timely outcome-focused advice to clients on their business practices, is a key reason why our clients trust us to secure the best possible outcomes in sophisticated and complex matters related to criminal cartel investigations, strategic mergers and joint ventures and allegations abuse of dominance/monopolization. We provide pragmatic and creative solutions to minimize risk and ensure compliance with Canadian and South African competition and foreign investment laws.

Our CMFI team includes several highly regarded lawyers in the field, with an impressive range of private practice and public sector experience. Our lawyers are ranked in GCR 100 - Global Competition Review; Chambers Global, Canada, and South Africa; Legal 500; Who’s Who Legal; Best Lawyers; and Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory. Many of our lawyers and advisors serve as non-governmental advisors to the Canadian Competition Bureau and the Competition Commission of South Africa at the International Competition Network (ICN).

Our team boasts a number of former regulatory enforcers, including the former Commissioner of Competition, the Senior Deputy Commissioner, Cartels Directorate and counsel to Canada’s Commissioner of Competition (Department of Justice Canada). These combined backgrounds provide the group with significant experience and invaluable insight into enforcement policy and practice that can be applied to our clients’ transactions and business practices.

Before you go to market, we can create programs that keep you on the right side of competition, marketing, and foreign investment laws, including audits, dawn raid training, in-house counsel workshops and in-person and online compliance training.

For timely news, commentary and insights on select developments in Canadian and South African competition law, visit our group’s blog, the Competition Chronicle.

 

Areas of Expertise

  • Abuse of Dominance, It is essential to ensure wherever you do business, it is conducted in alignment with competition laws. However, whether your business finds itself faced with allegations of anticompetitive practices or is on the receiving end of such practices, this conduct exposes your company to serious reputational and financial consequences.
  • Cartels & Criminal Investigations, If your company is faced with cartel and/or other criminal investigations, the financial cost is likely to be in the millions, if not billions of dollars globally, not to mention the reputational damage and the other far-reaching consequences that you have yet to think of, much less consider a strategy to address.
  • Competition Compliance & Risk Management, To ensure your business is on the right side of Canada’s Competition Act and by extension not be faced with heavy/significant fines and/or other more serious consequences, it is essential to implement appropriate compliance programs and manage for associated risks.
  • Competition Litigation, including Class Actions, Class actions and allegations of competition law violation threaten your company’s ability to conduct daily business, complete mergers and build your brand at home or abroad.
  • Foreign Investment, Foreign investments are now more than ever subject to enhanced scrutiny. On top of this, the Investment Canada Act—that provides for the notification and review of certain business investments by non-Canadians—includes an opaque and increasingly utilized national security review regime.
  • IP & Competition, Intellectual property (IP) encourages the creation of varied information and intellectual goods, enabling consumers to choose between competing suppliers of the same types of goods and services.
  • Marketing & Advertising, Marketing and advertising and other consumer protection laws are being enforced more aggressively throughout the world, particularly in the digital marketplace.
  • Marketing & Privacy, Consumer data rights are gaining more attention across the globe as more consumers come to rely on data-driven services in the digital economy. Consumer data rights include fundamental rights to privacy, as well as a range of measures that aim to provide consumers with greater control over their data. Privacy, competition and anti-spam laws all have a role to play when it comes to data privacy.
  • Merger Review & Control, Looking to complete a merger and/or acquisition? If yes, then odds are this M&A transaction must be assessed to determine whether merger control filings or foreign investment reviews are required in Canada, South Africa or other jurisdictions, and whether such transactions give rise to any substantive competition law concerns.
  • Trade Associations, Trade associations serve legitimate business objectives, such as advocating for the industry and educating consumers.

Achievements

Team

Primary Contacts
  • Antonio Di Domenico, Partner | Co-leader, Competition, Marketing & Foreign Investment, Toronto, ON, +1 416 868 3410, adidomenico@fasken.com
  • Huy Do, Partner | CO-LEADER, COMPETITION, MARKETING & FOREIGN INVESTMENT | LEADER, SOUTHEAST ASIA GROUP, Toronto, ON, +1 416 868 3505, hdo@fasken.com
  • John Pecman, Senior Business Advisor, Ottawa, ON, +1 613 696 6974, jpecman@fasken.com
  • Lesley Morphet, Partner, Johannesburg, +27 11 586 6003, lmorphet@fasken.com

Client Work

  • Miura acquires Cleaver-Brooks, [Deal - Miura Co., Ltd.], Private M&A deal
  • Sale of Gelpac to ProAmpac, [Deal - Gelpac Inc.], Sale of Gelpac to ProAmpac.
  • Nordic Capital acquires Zafin, a leading provider of SAAS core modernization and transformation solutions, [Deal - Zafin Labs Americas Incorporated], Nordic Capital snaps up Canadian SaaS fintech Zafin
  • Cermaq settles price fixing class action, [Case - Cermaq], Settlement of price fixing class action in the market for farmed Atlantic salmon.
  • ABB completes acquisition of smart water technology company Real Tech, [Deal - ABB], ABB expands its strong presence in the water segment and complements its portfolio with optical sensor technology critical for the age of smart water.
  • Blue Wolf Capital Partners completed the acquisition of LOGISTEC Corporation, [Deal - LOGISTEC Corporation], Acquisition of LOGISTEC Corporation by Blue Wolf Capital Partners.
  • Essential Energy Services acquired by Element Technical Services, [Deal - Essential Energy Services], Essential Energy Services acquired by Element Technical Services.
  • SCR-Sibelco NV announces strategic joint venture with Avalon Advanced Materials Inc., [Deal - SCR-Sibelco NV], Belgian based global material solution company completes a joint venture agreement to develop Ontario lithium mining operations.
  • The Sarjeant Company Limited completes acquisition of Northern Ontario assets from Superior Propane, [Deal - The Sarjeant Company Limited], Leading Canadian construction and energy solutions provider acquires Northern Ontario assets from Canada’s largest propane distributor.

Knowledge

Events

News

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