McMillan’s Competition/Antitrust Group Honoured at the 2015 Global Competition Review Awards

McMillan is pleased to announce that our Competition/Antitrust Group has been honoured as a co-winner of the “Matter of the Year” award by Global Competition Review (GCR) for its contribution to the GlaxoSmithKline/Novartis/Eli Lilly matter. The Global Competition Review Awards are based on more than 3,000 votes cast by competition and antitrust practitioners globally.

Partners Dr. A. Neil Campbell, Mark Opashinov and Casey Halladay were Canadian counsel to Novartis AG in four major transactions involving: (1) the US$16 billion purchase of GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) Oncology business; (2) the US$7 billion sale of Novartis’ Vaccines business to GSK; (3) the creation of an US$11 billion consumer health JV with GSK; (4) and the US$5.4 billion sale of Novartis’ Animal Health business to Eli Lilly.

Additionally, a McMillan team led by Mark Opashinov and Jun Chao Meng was nominated as a finalist for the “Merger Control Matter of the Year – Americas” award for its role as Canadian counsel to Veyance in its US$1.9 billion acquisition by Continental.

Our 2015 recognition continues a long tradition of success at the annual GCR Awards. In 2014, McMillan was a co-winner of the “Matter of the Year” award for the role that partners Casey Halladay and Eric Vallières played in representing American Airlines in its merger with US Airways. Our Competition/Antitrust Group also received the 2014 award for “Behavioural Matter of the Year – Americas” for its successful defence of MasterCard in a precedent-setting litigation before the Competition Tribunal. That team included James Musgrove, Jeffrey Simpson, David Kent and Adam Chisholm. In 2011, a team led by Mark Opashinov also received the “Matter of the Year” award for its work on the Oracle/Sun Microsystems merger, in which McMillan was Canadian counsel to Oracle.

Our competition/antitrust lawyers have also been repeatedly recognized for their individual accomplishments at the GCR Awards. In 2014 and 2013, Casey Halladay was a finalist for the “Lawyer of the Year – Under 40” award and, in 2011, D. Martin Low QC was a finalist for the “Cartels Lawyer – Special Recognition Award”; no other Canadian practitioners were nominated for these awards.

For more than three decades, McMillan has been recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in competition law. Our cross-Canada team of lawyers in Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, Vancouver and Calgary routinely assists clients in obtaining approval of industry-transforming transactions and in defending cartel, class action, and unilateral conduct litigation before the competition authorities and the courts. For more information about our Competition/Antitrust Group, please click here.