Shearman & Sterling LLP Announces Launch of Antitrust Unpacked Blog

NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- International law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP has announced the launch of its new antitrust blog – Antitrust Unpacked (http://shearmanantitrust.com) – an online resource for corporate counsel and business leaders on antitrust and competition law in the United States, Europe and around the world.

While many of the posts will be triggered by a recent case or other development, the blog is not intended to be a reporter of current events. Rather, Antitrust Unpacked is designed to provide insight and analysis into the antitrust and competition laws and enforcement practices that have a significant impact on business operations of major national and multinational corporations.

Shearman & Sterling partner Dale Collins is the architect of Antitrust Unpacked. Collins' career spans more than three decades in antitrust and includes time as a special assistant to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush and later as Deputy Assistant Attorney General under William F. Baxter in the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division. A New York-based partner at Shearman & Sterling, Collins is also an adjunct professor of law at the New York University School of Law, where he teaches antitrust law.

Recognizing the competing demands for the time of business leaders and their advisors, Collins says he plans to limit posts to developments that are most important to them.

"Antitrust Unpacked gives us the flexibility to share what we believe are the most critical and practical pieces of antitrust information with our clients and friends," Collins said. "While there are other online antitrust resources, our goal is to leverage the experience of our global team of antitrust lawyers and analysts to provide select commentary, both topically and geographically."

Kenneth S. Prince, head of the firm's Antitrust Practice Group, added, "With the depth of experience and a global team, Shearman & Sterling's Antitrust Group is in a unique position to provide practical insights and analysis that will help businesses better understand significant issues and developments in the antitrust field."

The inaugural post, "U.S. Antitrust Risk Analysis in a Nutshell," suggests a simple but powerful way to gain insight into whether a merger, joint venture, new pricing model, distribution scheme, or other business activity is likely to entail significant antitrust risk without the need to understand the technical intricacies of the antitrust laws. While a formal antitrust risk assessment still requires a full analysis, the nutshell principles will enable nonantitrust lawyers and business executives to spot issues and develop a meaningful intuition about what will and will not pass antitrust muster.

Collins adds that Antitrust Unpacked will look at a number of the most significant antitrust issues facing companies in the U.S. and around the world, including mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures; the limits on conduct of dominant firms; price and nonprice restrictions on resellers; the tensions between intellectual property rights and antitrust rules; refusals to deal or license technology; the protection of human intellectual capital from encroachment; price discrimination and other forms of nonlinear pricing; packaged or bundled sales; and standard setting and other collaborative industry activities.

Shearman & Sterling LLP's Antitrust Practice Group is recognized throughout the world for its leadership position in the antitrust field. The current edition of Legal 500 says the firm is "[c]learly among the best in the U.S. antitrust bar'" and notes its reputation as "one of the go-to law firms for major merger clearance advice off the back of a plethora of high-profile deals and its exceptional relationships with the FTC." Chambers Global 2010 ranked the firm among the top firms for Competition/Antitrust in the U.S. and Europe.

Shearman & Sterling is a global law firm with approximately 900 lawyers in 20 offices in 12 countries. The firm is a leader in antitrust, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, project development and finance, complex business litigation and international arbitration, asset management and tax.

SOURCE Shearman & Sterling LLP