John Cassels works in our
Competition and EU Regulatory Group. He provides
practical, commercial advice on the assessment and allocation of
competition and regulatory risk. He listens to his clients so that
he understands their business and their commercial
objectives.
John has advised on many complex and high profile competition and
regulatory matters, including a number of multi-jurisdictional
cartel and merger investigations. He has carried out compliance
audits and drafted compliance manuals for dominant undertakings,
and prepared defences and negotiated settlements with regulators in
the UK, EU and US. John has particular expertise counselling in the
food, life
sciences, transport
and
financial services sectors.
John also has a public procurement and state aid practice and
worked in government for three years where he advised the
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (now the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) on the sale of the
Government's stake in British Energy to EDF Energy.
Relevant experience
includes:
- Successfully defending All
Nippon Airways in the international air cargo cartel
investigation
- Defending a client
(confidential) that was the subject of a
cartel investigation (the investigation was eventually dropped
in the EU)
- Building a commercially sound
and competition compliant EU distribution network for a
dominant life sciences business
- Advising a number of
major software developers and suppliers on routes to market,
distribution and pricing issues
- Counselling a logistics
support business on the architecture and operation of an
information sharing platform to minimise antitrust
risks
- Steering GE's acquisition of
Instrumentarium through second phase EU and US merger
investigations
- Advising on the creation of
Diageo and AstraZeneca
- Working with numerous food and
food supplements businesses on EU regulatory issues (including
nutrition and health claims and labelling)
John originated
the EU Cartels Digest, published by Jordans, and writes a monthly
competition newsletter for Jordans. You can sign up for a
free trial of Jordans Competition Law Online and to receive
the free monthly competition newsletter here:
http://www.jordanscompetitionlaw.co.uk/