Competition and Sustainability: Stepping Up to the Plate

Nicole Kar, Bella Spring & Emma Cochrane (Linklaters)

The global pandemic has suddenly – and rightly – dominated people’s attention. But there is another more significant global emergency raging in our midst: climate change. Over the last year, we have seen a marked increase in the number of clients talking to us about competition law and sustainability. From a desire to co-operate to achieve green objectives, to environmental factors that are driving a deal, these issues are coming up again and again.

As advisors, bound by confidentiality obligations, we can’t talk about the cases that we advise on in specific terms or tell people about the cases where we see environmental initiatives fail to even get off the ground because of concerns about potential competition risk. But we think it is really important to highlight how these issues are coming to the forefront and to offer solutions.

We have commissioned some research looking at what is driving companies’ decision-making on sustainability and competition law. You can see our summary results here. Spoiler alert: competition law is a genuine barrier to companies co-operating on environmental grounds and many companies believe, like us, that competition agencies should act…

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