Linklaters’ co-head of competition litigation, Sarina Williams, has been working at the forefront of cases in the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) for several years, but 2023 was a year of winning defence-side mandates in hotly contested and high-value class actions as the CAT grapples with new law in untested areas.
Williams won the mandate to represent Sony in a £5bn class action and, more recently, mobile provider Three in the £3bn loyalty penalty collective action, meaning Linklaters is now defending in five class actions and intervening in four. Last year, Williams and her team, on behalf of Visa, also prevented certification in the parallel opt-in and opt-out class actions relating to interchange fees, the second class action to have a successful outcome on the defence side at the certification stage.
Linklaters’ competition litigation practice is the fastest growing in the firm’s global disputes team. 2023 marked ten years of Williams working on the interchange fee dispute for Visa, and she continues to do so, now under the umbrella proceedings, which are heading for Trial 1 on liability issues in February. Williams also secured an eleventh-hour settlement deal for Visa last October in one of The Lawyer‘s top 20 cases of 2023 brought by Euronet.