Biography: Competition

Elaine Johnston is head of the US antitrust practice at Allen & Overy and has a broad practice covering mergers and acquisitions, antitrust litigation and antitrust counselling. Elaine has been featured in Chambers USA, PLC Which Lawyer?, and Euromoney's Guide to the World's Leading Competition and Antitrust Lawyers.

Elaine has an active practice before the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission representing merging parties in connection with mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures and is particularly experienced in handling complex cross-border deals. She has handled deals for ABB, Agfa-Gevaert, Computershare, Deutsche Bank, Experian, First American, Metso, Raytheon, Saudi Aramco, Tyco, Visa International and Volvo, among others. Elaine also has an active antitrust litigation practice and represented Experian and Saudi Aramco in recent cases. In addition, she regularly advises companies on business conduct, including worldwide distribution and licensing arrangements, patent pools, information exchanges and benchmarking; and represents companies facing investigations by US government antitrust authorities and parallel proceedings in other jurisdictions.

Her recent experience includes advising Computershare Limited on its US$550 million acquisition of the Shareowner Services Business of The Bank of New York Mellon, a combination of two major competitors which was investigated and cleared by the Department of Justice; and advising Nortel Networks on antitrust issues relating to the sale of its patent portfolio at auction for US$4.5 billion.

Elaine received her LLM from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and her BA (Hons) and MA from Clare College, Cambridge University, UK.