Practice Areas & Industries: Jones Day

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Jones Day has extensive experience representing clients in connection with criminal antitrust investigations and prosecutions involving a variety of industries, from basic commodity products to the delivery of high-technology products and services, including defense and construction contracting, construction materials, chemicals, metallic powders, bottling, crude oil, oil exploration equipment, dairy products, steel containers, wirebound boxes, cellular technology, aerospace products, publishing, health care, international shipping, and several other products and services. Jones Day has represented both U.S. and non-U.S. clients confronted with investigations involving allegations of price fixing, bid rigging, market allocation arrangements and other forms of anticompetitive conduct viewed by the government as criminal. We have substantial experience in all phases of the criminal antitrust process, from the pre-grand jury investigative stage to indictments and through trial. Nor is this experience limited to the matters within the United States, as Jones Day has represented clients in investigations by authorities in Canada, the European Union, and Australia.

Lawyers in both the Antitrust & Competition and the Corporate Criminal Investigations Practices regularly represent clients confronted with criminal antitrust investigations and work together in marshalling their knowledge and practical experience in these matters. Jones Day lawyers are able to combine their extensive experience in antitrust and complex criminal litigation matters to formulate effective and creative strategies for defending their clients faced with allegations of criminal wrongdoing under antitrust and related statutes. As a result, Jones Day has had success achieving the full range of resolutions for clients: convincing the government not to bring charges, securing immunity for targets of an investigation, obtaining leniency under the Department of Justice's Amnesty Program and winning acquittals at trial. When clients have found themselves faced with limited practical alternatives, Jones Day has also helped them in navigating the difficult waters of plea negotiations.

Jones Day has been a principal participant in the three most significant antitrust criminal proceedings of recent times, as chronicled in a front-page story that appeared in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. In the Vitamins matter, Jones Day represented Rhône-Poulenc, a French company for which we obtained total amnesty for the company and its employees in both the U.S. and the EU -- in the latter, the first company ever to receive total amnesty. Total fines paid by other companies exceeded $2 billion, and executives from several other companies served jail sentences in the U.S. More recently, Jones Day represents a major Finnish paper producer that also obtained total immunity in the EU with respect to alleged antitrust law violations involving the paper products sector in Europe. And Jones Day is representing Bayer, a German company, in a series of antitrust investigations with respect to various rubber chemicals and related products. According to The Wall Street Journal, these are among the most significant and far-reaching criminal investigations ever undertaken by the U.S.