There has been a great deal of publicity surrounding the Antitrust Division’s recent announcement that a corporation involved in a criminal antitrust violation may get credit for an antitrust compliance program if certain conditions are met.  The credit may include a DPA (Deferred Prosecution Agreement: the government reaches a plea agreement with the defendant; files…

Those familiar with this blog have seen a number of posts questioning the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s long-standing position that a company shouldn’t be rewarded for having a corporate compliance program that fails it. Last week, the Antitrust Division announced that it will now consider corporate compliance at the charging stage of criminal antitrust…

On April 9, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice held a public roundtable on the subject of criminal antitrust compliance.  If any other Division of the DOJ had done this, it would not be particularly exceptional, but within the antitrust compliance world, it was significant—exciting even! Since at least the time of the…

On April 27, 2016 Hitachi Chemical Co., Ltd. was charged by the Antitrust Division in a one-count Information alleging that the company (through predecessor companies) engaged in a conspiracy to “fix prices and rig bids of certain electrolytic capacitors in the United States and elsewhere beginning at least as early as August 2002 and continuing…

On April 5, 2016 the Department of Justice held a press conference to announce a “new” program involving enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)(press release here). The program, generally referred to as the Pilot Program, is outlined in a document released by the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division of DOJ entitled: “The…

All antitrust lawyers (and, we hope, all our clients) understand the dangers of price discussions with competitors. But even vertical price discussions—those with suppliers or retailers—can later raise antitrust issues. The most recent vivid examples are the cases Johnson & Johnson is defending against Costco and others after it imposed a Colgate program following discussions…

As the U.S. Sentencing Commission considers reforms of the guidelines for antitrust crimes, it should take action to affirm the importance of antitrust compliance programs as an essential tool in the fight against cartels, and to provide a balance against the Antitrust Division’s past approach of refusing to consider compliance programs in any case for…

Wow, what a success! The Antitrust Division recently announced that its investigations in the auto parts market uncovered “separate conspiracies to fix the prices of more than 30 different products sold to US car manufacturers ….” [1] This adds to the results thus far in the investigation, with guilty pleas from 20 companies and fines…