The best antitrust lawyers

More and more often, the antitrust authorities are not only looking at salespeople or buyers who secretly agree on prices or divide up customers and territories, but also technicians, engineers, employees from research and development or HR professionals. In times of a shortage of skilled workers, human resources departments are tempted to make agreements at the expense of employees – and engineers establish cross-company collaborations. Most of the time they don’t even notice that they are coming into conflict with antitrust law. “Employers usually don’t have it on their radar either,” says antitrust lawyer Thorsten Mäger from Hengeler. Kaan Gürer from Linklaters knows that only a few companies have had their people trained. So that they don’t incur millions in fines. And so that they can use their training to defend themselves. Because: “In the end, the company manager is liable for cartel agreements made by employees, even if he was not aware of them – precisely because he did not take care of it,” warns lawyer Sascha Dethof from Fieldfisher.