UK
Ireland
Monitoring trustee services
Mission-led to meet specific needs
The philosophy of S&W’s monitoring trustee practice is collaborative, working with you to help you meet your compliance requirements.
We’ll proactively engage with your company to inform your response to the requirements under the commitments and help you evidence your compliance position to the vested competition authority or regulator.
As part of this process, we discuss the impact of the commitments on your company, your current compliance measures and additional measures that may be needed. We add an external layer of compliance scrutiny and skilfully navigate and leverage our relationships with competition authorities and the beneficiaries of the commitments.
S&W’s monitoring trustee partners and practitioners
Our monitoring trustee experts have significant experience reporting to the competition authorities and regulators globally, working across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Over the years, we have built a skilful and diverse team, able to work in several languages.
Clients also benefit from S&W’s full services proposition and its international network through CLA Global, bringing particular strength in Germany, France, China and the US, while maintaining our independence.
Our service is delivered by dedicated, partner-led teams that are as consistent as possible for the life cycle of the mandate.
How we help
We support you in achieving and evidencing compliance in matters relating to:
Merger control commitments
- Commitments agreed between businesses and competition authorities or regulators can be structural (including divestiture of the entire business or parts of it), behavioural, in the form of market conduct commitments vis-à-vis competitors or customers, or both
- A single monitoring trustee across jurisdictions can support the timely completion of complex, global transactions, subject to multiple sets of commitments imposed by various competition authorities
- We also act as shadow trustees (or independent advisers) advising companies and competition authorities globally on commitments’ and remedy takers’ suitability ahead of merger clearance decisions
- In the UK, we have acted on over 20 CMA interim order mandates.
Antitrust investigation commitments:
- We have acted on numerous commitments stemming from antitrust investigations, including in the context of TFEU102 (or equivalent legislation). The scope of these commitments has included access, interoperability, ring-fencing, data separation, and pricing and contract variations
- We have also monitored commitments stemming from horizontal agreements and TFEU101 investigations
National security commitments
- We were the first monitoring trustee appointed in the UK in this context, and have also monitored state aid commitments
Digital services regulations (DMA, DSA, DMCC, etc)
We act as the monitoring trustee in the context of commitments stemming from digital services regulations
We also act as an independent auditor, testing compliance of designated companies, working alongside our in-house digital services team
Recent structural commitments cases
Recent Behavioural Commitments cases include
Get in touch
Please get in touch for information on our monitoring trustee service and how we can help you.
