James Webber

Shearman & Sterling

The mandate that originally put Shearman & Sterling antitrust partner James Webber on the map came in 2014. He acted for UK hospital operator BMI Healthcare in the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into private healthcare. His efforts resulted in the first blocking minority in a CMA market investigation.

Since becoming a partner that year, Webber has helped clients untangle the antitrust issues of large M&A and corporate processes, facing governments and regulators. Last year, he acted for ViacomCBS on the launch of a streaming platform, SkyShowtime, in a joint venture with Comcast. With availability across more than 20 European territories, the project required Webber to obtain approval from the EU Commission.

He advised the same client on the challenging $2bn sale of its publishing business Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House. The US Department of Justice recently sued to stop the transaction, citing competition concerns, with Webber part of the team steering the publisher through the wrangle. In addition, last June he helped with the antitrust elements of UK mining giant Anglo American’s sale of the Cerrejon thermal coal mine in Colombia to Glencore.

Webber has also been heavily involved in hammering out the logistics around Brexit. The UK’s new subsidy control regime following the abandonment of the EU framework is based on a paper written by Webber which sought to simplify the request for and assignment of state aid. His intervention, alongside George Peretz QC of Monckton Chambers, also informed policy discussions around rewrites of the Northern Ireland protocol.