International Clients

U.S. Antitrust Counsel for International Companies

Defense, offense, deals, and compliance in the U.S. antitrust system — for companies based outside it.

The United States antitrust system surprises international companies. It reaches conduct that happened entirely abroad. It trebles damages. It lets private plaintiffs — including class actions covering millions of purchasers — do most of the enforcing. Its discovery obligations exceed anything in Europe or Asia. And it can be criminal: prison for executives, nine-figure fines for companies.

Bona Law is U.S. antitrust and competition counsel for international companies. We defend businesses based in Canada, Asia, Europe, and Latin America in U.S. antitrust litigation and class actions, represent them in government investigations, bring U.S. antitrust claims for companies — foreign or domestic — shut out of American markets, lead the U.S. side of cross-border merger clearance, counsel U.S. subsidiaries of foreign parents on compliance, and protect those results in the courts of appeals. We are clear about scope: we practice U.S. law, and when a matter needs filings or advice in Brussels, London, Istanbul, or Tokyo, we coordinate trusted local counsel and quarterback the whole matter — the same model the largest global firms use, at boutique economics.

Representative Experience

• In re Capacitors Antitrust Litigation (N.D. Cal. MDL) — defense of Taitsu, a Japanese capacitor manufacturer, in a nationwide electronics price-fixing MDL; the court denied indirect-purchaser class certification against our client in November 2020.
• Cross-border merger clearance — U.S. HSR filings coordinated with parallel merger filings before the European Commission, the UK CMA, and other non-U.S. authorities, across multiple transactions for U.S. and international acquirers.
• PharmacyChecker.com litigation — represented PharmacyChecker.com, a U.S. company whose website gives consumers information about prescription-drug prices, including at online pharmacies abroad, in U.S. antitrust claims against organizations alleged to have conspired to suppress international pharmacy competition online — through a published Ninth Circuit victory on antitrust standing.
• Cross-border antitrust counseling — advised a technology company expanding across Latin America on potential U.S. antitrust claims against a dominant global payments network, including FTAIA analysis of whether U.S. courts could reach the conduct.
• People of the State of California v. Vitol Inc., et al. — outside trial counsel to the California Attorney General in a Cartwright Act action against global gasoline-trading firms.
• Global antitrust compliance — designed and maintained U.S. and global compliance programs for multinational manufacturers, and we provide real-time trade-association counseling to a leading global packaging manufacturer.

Why Bona Law for International Companies

• The whole firm is the team. International work at Bona Law is not a desk — our litigators, appellate lawyers, former enforcers, and compliance counselors all work these matters. With more than 15 antitrust attorneys, we have a deeper bench than most people expect from a boutique.
• Big-firm pedigree, boutique economics. European Commission, DOJ, California AG, General Motors, AT&T, and global-firm training — with senior lawyers doing the work, engagement structures that reward efficiency, and fixed fees where they fit. 
• You already know us. The Antitrust Attorney Blog is read around the world, our foreign-company primer has circulated in English and French, and our lawyers publish in international competition journals. Ask your home-country competition counsel about us.
• Clear scope. We practice U.S. law and coordinate the rest through trusted local counsel.
• A partner to referring firms. If you are a competition lawyer outside the United States, we handle the U.S. matter and you keep the client relationship — see how we work as antitrust co-counsel.

The International Team

At Bona Law, the team is the entire firm — litigators, appellate lawyers, former enforcers, and compliance counselors work international matters together. These are the lawyers international clients and referring counsel usually meet first:

• Luis Blanquez (Partner) — former European Commission DG COMP Merger Task Force lawyer with a decade at international firms in Brussels, Madrid, and London; admitted in California and Spain; native Spanish speaker.
• Cansu Günel (Attorney) — nearly a decade in the global antitrust group of one of the world's largest law firms; Harvard LL.M.; admitted in New York, the District of Columbia, and Istanbul; native Turkish speaker.
• Pat Pascarella (Partner and General Counsel) — former DOJ Antitrust Division lawyer and former chief antitrust counsel of AT&T; before joining Bona Law, he persuaded Mexico's competition authority to revoke a billion-dollar abuse-of-dominance fine.
• Steve Cernak (Partner) — led General Motors' global antitrust function for more than 20 years, including multinational merger reviews and global compliance programs; author of the treatise Antitrust in Distribution and Franchising.
• Jim Lerner (Partner and Director of Litigation) — three decades defending international cartel investigations and follow-on class actions — auto parts, batteries, display panels, vitamins — before authorities in the U.S., EU, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.

Why International Companies Hire a U.S. Antitrust Boutique

General counsel outside the United States tell us the same two things: they want lawyers who actually know the U.S. antitrust system — not a global brand's local office — and they want the economics of the engagement to make sense. Bona Law is built for exactly that client. Our lawyers include a former European Commission Merger Task Force lawyer, a former General Motors global antitrust chief, a former AT&T chief antitrust counsel, a Harvard-trained litigator who spent nearly a decade in a global firm's antitrust group, and career antitrust litigators from some of the largest firms in the world. Because we are a boutique, we can also take positions — including against the largest companies in the world — that conflict-laden global firms cannot. And if you first heard of us through The Antitrust Attorney Blog, you already know how we think.

Does U.S. Antitrust Law Apply to Foreign Companies?

Usually the real question is how much of it applies — and the answer surprises people. Under the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act (FTAIA), U.S. antitrust law reaches foreign conduct that has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on U.S. commerce. Selling into the United States — even through distributors, even as components inside someone else's product — can be enough. A cartel meeting that never left Asia or Europe can produce a U.S. grand jury subpoena, a Department of Justice extradition request, and a decade of treble-damages class actions. For a plain-English introduction to the statute, start with our explainer, Friendship and the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act.

Our widely read primer, Five U.S. Antitrust Law Tips for Foreign Companies, walks through the features of the U.S. system that most often catch international businesses off guard: multiple enforcers (the DOJ, the FTC, and the state attorneys general), courts rather than agencies deciding outcomes, the lawfulness of monopoly without exclusionary conduct, the FTAIA's reach, and the dominance of private litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court has even addressed how U.S. courts should treat a foreign government's characterization of its own law in antitrust cases — we wrote about it in Federal Courts, Not Foreign Governments, Decide Foreign Law.

Defending International Companies in U.S. Litigation and Investigations

We defended Taitsu, a Japanese capacitor manufacturer, in In re Capacitors Antitrust Litigation — one of the largest electronics price-fixing MDLs of the past decade. In November 2020, the court denied the indirect-purchaser plaintiffs' motion for class certification against our client, holding that variations among the laws of the proposed 31-state class defeated predominance — a significant defense win in a case in which co-defendants collectively paid hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements. Our litigators have spent decades defending Japanese, European, and other international manufacturers in cartel investigations and follow-on class actions — matters spanning auto parts, capacitors, vitamins, display panels, and batteries, before U.S. enforcers and in coordination with proceedings in the EU, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, and Korea.

When the government comes first, our antitrust investigations practice covers grand jury subpoenas and civil investigative demands, leniency strategy, witness representation, and negotiation with agency staff — and our team has represented clients in competition investigations in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Europe, and Asia. When the plaintiffs come first, our class action defense practice fights certification, ancillary state-law claims, and damages models — often alongside the complex commercial litigation claims that travel with them, including, increasingly, civil RICO claims. The U.S. discovery obligations — depositions, document preservation, cross-border data transfers — are often the hardest part of the U.S. system for a foreign defendant to absorb, and we manage them daily. If your company has been named in a U.S. antitrust case, start with our guide: Help! My Company Is a Defendant in an Antitrust Class Action.

U.S. Antitrust Claims for International Companies

The same system that threatens foreign defendants also protects foreign competitors. A non-U.S. company that is excluded from a U.S. market by monopolization, group boycotts, or exclusive-dealing arrangements can sue under U.S. antitrust law — for treble damages. We have counseled a technology company expanding across Latin America on potential U.S. claims against a dominant global payments network — including the threshold FTAIA question of whether a U.S. court could reach the conduct. And for PharmacyChecker.com — a U.S. company whose price-comparison website promotes international pharmacy competition — we pressed U.S. antitrust claims against organizations accused of suppressing that competition online, winning a published Ninth Circuit decision on antitrust standing. Our antitrust litigation practice litigates monopolization and exclusionary-conduct cases for plaintiffs as well as defendants — rare among defense-quality firms, and often exactly what an excluded foreign competitor needs — and our appellate practice protects those wins when the other side appeals.

Cross-Border Mergers: HSR and Global Coordination

We lead the U.S. antitrust side of cross-border transactions — Hart-Scott-Rodino analysis and filings, substantive risk assessment, and second-request response through our mergers and acquisitions practice — and coordinate parallel merger filings before the European Commission, the UK CMA, and other authorities through local counsel. Our M&A team pairs Steve Cernak, a partner who spent more than 20 years running global merger reviews in-house at General Motors, with Luis Blanquez, a partner who reviewed mergers inside the European Commission itself.

The HSR rules' foreign-person exemptions are narrower than deal teams assume. On the foreign side, we have published practical guides to when a deal must be filed under the EU Merger Regulation and which transactions are notifiable under China's Anti-Monopoly Law, and we compared U.S. and UK review of the same transaction — the Paramount–Warner Brothers deal — agency by agency.

Counseling U.S. Subsidiaries of International Companies

Most international antitrust risk is not a lawsuit — it is a distribution agreement, a pricing policy, a trade-association meeting, or an information exchange inside a U.S. subsidiary whose parent assumes U.S. law works like home. We design and audit U.S. antitrust compliance programs for foreign-parented businesses, train U.S. teams, and answer the recurring questions: resale-price maintenance (treated very differently in the U.S. than in Europe — our attorneys wrote the comparison of antitrust compliance programs in the U.S. and the European Union), minimum advertised price programs, loyalty and bundled discounts, dual distribution, and dealings with competitors. U.S. enforcers now also prosecute no-poach and wage-fixing agreements criminally — a surprise for parent companies whose home jurisdictions treat hiring as purely an HR issue — and our overview of antitrust in labor markets explains the risk. For companies selling on both sides of the Atlantic, our lawyers have analyzed the EU's vertical agreements rules and what the Coty judgment means for businesses in Europe — and for foreign-funded companies pricing aggressively in U.S. markets, whether predatory-pricing claims should worry you. We also provide real-time trade-association counseling to a leading global packaging manufacturer.

Europe

Luis Blanquez served with the Merger Task Force of the European Commission's DG COMP in Brussels — working on matters including Oracle/PeopleSoft and Banco Santander/Abbey — and then spent a decade at international firms in Brussels, Madrid, and London on cartel investigations, merger control, and compliance. He is admitted in California and Spain and writes extensively on EU competition law: how to know whether your company is abusing a dominant position in the EU, how to file a complaint with the European Commission, what the EC's e-commerce sector inquiry means for online sellers, the EC's resale-price-maintenance enforcement, and how U.S. and EU enforcers diverge on Big Tech — most recently, Germany's Bundeskartellamt action against Amazon's control of seller pricing. He helps European companies understand what will feel familiar in the U.S. system and what will not. Contact: Luis Blanquez.

Turkey

Cansu Günel practiced for nearly a decade in the global antitrust group of one of the world's largest law firms before joining Bona Law, handling U.S. pharmaceutical antitrust litigation, FTC and European Commission investigations, and cross-border merger filings for our healthcare, pharmaceutical, and medical device client base and beyond. She trained in Turkish and EU competition law, holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, is admitted in New York, the District of Columbia, and Istanbul, and speaks native Turkish. Her featured guide, US and Turkish Antitrust and Competition Law: A Practical Comparison, is where most Turkish companies — and their Turkish counsel — should start. Contact: Cansu Günel.

Japan and Asia

Bona Law defended a Japanese manufacturer through class certification in the Capacitors MDL — see above — and our litigators bring decades of experience representing Japanese and other Asian companies and executives in U.S. cartel investigations and follow-on litigation, including matters coordinated with proceedings before authorities in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Jim Lerner, for example, has defended international cartel matters across auto parts, batteries, display panels, and vitamins for three decades. For companies with China exposure, The Antitrust Attorney Blog has articles about merger notification under China's Anti-Monopoly Law and the 2022 amendments to China's antitrust law. Contact: Jim Lerner.

Latin America

Our team's Latin America experience runs from counseling a technology company on U.S. antitrust strategy as it expanded across the region, to litigation against global commodities traders on behalf of the State of California through our state attorney general practice, to Pat Pascarella's career representing telecommunications leaders across the Americas — including convincing the Mexican competition authority to revoke a billion-dollar abuse-of-dominance fine before he joined Bona Law. Native Spanish capability through Luis Blanquez. Contact: Pat Pascarella.

Industry Experience

International matters land in the industries we already know: agriculture and food, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, energy and commodities trading, construction and building materials, telecommunications and platforms, blockchain and digital assets, and real estate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does U.S. antitrust law apply to a company with no U.S. offices?

Often, yes. If your conduct has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on U.S. commerce — including sales into the U.S. through intermediaries or as components — the Sherman Act can reach it, and U.S. courts can assert jurisdiction. The FTAIA line is fact-specific and worth a real analysis before you assume you are outside it; our plain-English FTAIA explainer and our Five Tips for Foreign Companies are the place to start.

Our company was named in a U.S. antitrust class action. How bad is it?

Treat it seriously and move quickly: U.S. class actions seek treble damages, discovery is broad and expensive, and early decisions — counsel, preservation, coordination with other defendants — shape everything. But these cases are defensible: we defeated class certification for a Japanese manufacturer in one of the largest electronics MDLs on record. Our guide, Help! My Company Is a Defendant in an Antitrust Class Action, walks through what happens next.

Can a foreign company sue in U.S. courts under the antitrust laws?

Yes. Foreign companies harmed in U.S. commerce — excluded from a U.S. market, boycotted, or squeezed by a dominant firm — can bring Sherman Act claims for treble damages, subject to the FTAIA and standing rules we have litigated. Our antitrust litigation practice brings these cases.

Do we have to file HSR if the buyer or target is foreign?

Frequently, yes. The foreign-person exemptions are narrower than deal teams expect, thresholds adjust annually, and failure to file draws real penalties. Cross-border deals also trigger parallel filings — before the European Commission, the UK CMA, and elsewhere — that need one coordinated strategy. Start with our guides to HSR filing requirements and EU merger-control filing requirements, or talk to our M&A team.

Will U.S. discovery reach documents and witnesses located abroad?

Usually more of them than you expect. U.S. courts routinely order production of foreign-held documents and depositions of foreign employees, and conflicts with home-country data-protection and blocking statutes must be managed, not assumed to excuse production. Plan for it from day one — it is one of the five realities of the U.S. system that most surprise foreign companies, and our investigations practice manages it daily.

Do you handle the filings in Brussels or London yourselves?

No — and be wary of anyone who blurs this. We are U.S. counsel. We lead the U.S. analysis and filings, and we coordinate EU, UK, and other foreign filings through experienced local competition counsel we know and trust, so you get one strategy and one point of accountability. Our team knows both sides of that coordination from the inside: one partner reviewed mergers at the European Commission, and another ran global merger reviews in-house at General Motors.

Resources for International Companies

• Featured: US and Turkish Antitrust and Competition Law: A Practical Comparison — Cansu Günel's side-by-side guide to the two systems.
• Five U.S. Antitrust Law Tips for Foreign Companies — the primer (the original version is also available in French).
• Friendship and the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act (FTAIA) — the reach of U.S. antitrust law over foreign conduct, in plain English.
• What Are the Requirements to File a Concentration Under the European Merger Control Rules?
• Comparing Antitrust Review of the Paramount–Warner Brothers Transaction by the US and the UK
• Antitrust Compliance Programs in the US and the European Union
• Help! My Company Is a Defendant in an Antitrust Class Action
• Antitrust Merger Control in China: Notifiable Transactions
• The Antitrust Attorney Blog — European Union archive

Talk to a U.S. Antitrust Lawyer

If your company faces a U.S. antitrust investigation or lawsuit, is planning a transaction that touches the United States, or wants U.S. counsel who will treat your budget like their own — contact Bona Law. If you are a law firm outside the United States, we work with referring counsel as partners, not competitors: see how we work as antitrust co-counsel.