As international companies across a wide range of sectors increasingly prioritise sustainability initiatives, the collaboration and cooperation required to further this agenda is attracting regulatory scrutiny. From M&A and competitor collaborations to state aid and policy developments, we provide clients with pragmatic solutions to achieve their goals in alignment with an increasingly stringent regulatory background.
With more than 50 partners and 300 lawyers in our worldwide competition team, Freshfields leads in all aspects of sustainability linked competition law, including collaboration and mergers, cartel investigations, abuse of dominance, state aid, follow-on claims and stand-alone litigation. Freshfields is the only firm to have worked on the leading cases in all these areas, and we have been recognised for ESG thought leadership. Our clients recognise that these strengths set us apart so trust us with their most significant matters.
Our competition practice offers unrivalled expertise in international, EU and national competition law matters. Our large, highly integrated team of leading experts in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the US work together across multiple locations on a daily basis. Through our contributions to policy debates at national and international levels and our experience across sectors, we are ideally placed to advise clients on their sustainability initiatives and how best to engage with the relevant authorities.
In November 2021, WWF-UK launched the WWF Basket (a set of outcomes and measures for UK food retailers to work towards) and the Retailers’ Commitment for Nature (where five signatory retailers agreed to set 1.5ºC science-based targets or SBTs in all scopes near- and long-term by the end of 2022). In November 2022, WWF-UK published its first report on progress made to date and recommendations on what needs to be done to meet its goals across seven target areas.
Our thinking