Chris Hersh

Chris Hersh is a partner in the Competition, Antitrust & Foreign Investment Group and joined Cassels Brock after practising competition law with another major Toronto-based firm. Chris has considerable experience advising clients on all aspects of competition law, including mergers and acquisitions, criminal matters, abuse of dominance, misleading advertising, as well as pricing and distribution issues. Additionally, Chris advises clients regarding foreign and cultural investment review.

In addition to his transactional and regulatory practice, Chris has an extensive competition litigation practice and acts for clients involved in matters before the Competition Tribunal, trans-border criminal investigations/prosecutions, as well as defendants and institutional plaintiffs in class actions brought in respect of price-fixing cartels.

Some of the highlights of Chris’s career in competition law include:

• Acting for Hilco (UK) Ltd. its purchase of $130 million of the Kraus Group's debt and security from three secured lenders
• Representing Starlight Investments Ltd. in its $2.3 billion acquisition of TransGlobe Apartment Real Estate Investment Trust
• Acting for Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in its approximately $1.08 billion acquisition of Enobia Pharma Corp.
• Advising clients in various abuse of dominance cases, including Interac, Waste Management, and the motion pictures theatres inquiry
• Representing clients before the Competition Tribunal and Courts in connection with reviewable matters, criminal prosecutions, challenges to production orders in Canada and abroad, as well as class actions. This has often involved working with counsel in other jurisdictions to develop and coordinate international strategy
• Providing counsel to clients in connection with responding to numerous section 11 orders and section 15 “dawn raids” on clients — this process often involved an active co-ordination with lawyers in the US, EU and other jurisdictions to respond to multinational investigations
• Working on numerous multinational legal teams to coordinate merger filings and submissions in respect of all sorts or types of transactions, from simple transactions to complex, contentious ones — recent transactions include acting for Pfizer on its US$68 billion acquisition of Wyeth, acting as international coordinating counsel to Goldcorp in its US$21.3 billion combination with Glamis Gold, representing Lundin Mining in its US$3 billion plan of arrangement with EuroZinc Mining, acting as international coordinating counsel to Goldcorp in its US$1.6 billion acquisition of mining assets from Barrick Gold, among others
• Working, on an ongoing basis, with a number of major corporations and industry associations to ensure that their activities comply with the Competition Act
• Acted for a major manufacturer/distributor of heavy equipment in its novel resolution of an inquiry under criminal provisions of the Competition Act — this involved no finding or admission of fault and the payment of voluntary customer rebates

In addition to his practice, Chris regularly writes and speaks in Canada and abroad on all aspects of competition. Chris also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Western Ontario Law School and as a guest lecturer at the Osgoode Hall Law School LL.M. program, where he taught competition law. Additionally, Chris is the current chair of the CBA Competition Law Section’s Private Actions committee and was the Canadian representative to the International Bar Association’s working group on European private enforcement of competition law.

Chris is recognized internationally as a leading Canadian competition lawyer by Chambers Global and Global Competition Review (the GCR 100). He was also selected as one of Lexpert's Rising Stars: Leading Lawyers Under 40 in 2010.

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