Antitrust developments continue to shape business decisions and competitive strategies across markets. Dechert's Antitrust/Competition Practice continues to play a role in shaping these developments, and we will share with you our front-line experience as well as our insights into future developments. Differentiation remains a fundamental competitive strategy. We will review how differentiation has been understood and misunderstood in merger analysis by looking at major enforcement decisions in the United States and the EU, including Whole Foods/Wild Oats (which we successfully litigated), Goodle/Double Click, and XM/Sirius.

Cartel investigations continue to serve as a laboratory for enforcement agencies to develop new techniques in multi-jurisdictional investigations. We will share with you cross-border strategies we have employed to deal with investigators as well as to handle the very sensitive privilege issues that arise in these and other contexts. No one wants to be a defendant in antitrust class action. But there are complex litigation and settlement strategies that companies should understand before finding themselves embroiled in such disputes. We will share with you our experience employing these strategies.

Discussion Topics:

• Insights and questions about merger enforcement emerging from the agencies' recent string of high-profile challenges and non-challenges
• Cross-border strategies, privilege issues, and settlement options arising from international cartel investigations
• The nuts and bolts of antitrust class actions
• Litigation and settlement strategies, opt-outs, and state law factors
• Other hot topics: Leegin's impact, the courts' efforts to grapple with bundled pricing, EU's battle with Microsoft, R-P developments, and predictions on antitrust in the next administration