Regulatory and Antitrust Deals: European Firms Hold Four of the Top 10

Firm leaders who look for antitrust and regulatory deals law firms usually start from the names on a deal list. Sartori & Partners data show 207 regulatory and antitrust deals in the 12 months to October 2026, the smallest deal type on record, and the firms that advised them do not look like the firms that lead the deal market as a whole. A European firm ranks first, four of the top 10 are headquartered in Europe, and most of the names are absent from the market's own top 10. One caution frames every figure below: most merger clearance, licensing and supervisory work is never announced as a deal. A filing with a competition authority or a financial regulator rarely produces a press release that names counsel, so this record shows the visible edge of the practice, not its full size.

The first firm on the list is CMS, in the 11-20 band of deals advised over 12 months. The next six firms all sit in the 6-10 band and the last three in the 3-5 band. The list is shallow: across all dated deals, the first firm sits in the 1,200+ band. Origin is the second feature. CMS, Freshfields, Heuking and Gide Loyrette Nouel A.A.R.P.I are European-headquartered firms, from the UK, Germany and France. The rest are US firms, plus DLA Piper, which was built on both sides of the Atlantic.

Set this against the top 10 for all dated deals in the Sartori & Partners record. Only Sidley Austin, Jones Day and DLA Piper appear on both lists, ranked 8th, 6th and 9th in the wider deal market. None of the four European names on the regulatory list sits in the market's top 10. For a firm building the practice, the shape of the list is the opening: no adviser dominates the visible work, so one partner hire with an active regulatory docket can put a firm on it. The origin of the list is the warning: on public regulatory mandates, the firms a client sees first include European competition benches, not only the US deal firms.

Regulatory and antitrust deals are 0.4% of all dated deals, against 19.3% for M&A, the type that most often triggers a clearance filing. That gap says more about disclosure than about demand. A merger clearance usually travels inside the M&A announcement, if it is mentioned at all, and supervisory work for banks and insurers is confidential by design. The 207 deals on record came from 124 distinct clients, or 1.7 deals per client on average. The counts are matters on record, not fees, and they are not a ranking of practices by revenue.

The consequence for a hiring decision is plain. Do not size a regulatory bench from this count, and do not read a candidate's thin deal-credit list as a thin practice. Use the record to see which firms are visible on announced regulatory work, then test a candidate's real matter load through regulator filings and client references.

In the Sartori & Partners deal record, lawyers from the antitrust and competition practice work on 44.4% of regulatory and antitrust deals, and financial services regulatory lawyers on 24.2%. Across all dated deals the two practices appear on 0.6% and 0.5%. One deal can carry both practices, so the shares overlap and are not a split of the type.

The reverse view matters more for hiring. Of the 300 deals on record that involve antitrust lawyers, 92 are regulatory and antitrust deals and 164 are disputes and investigations. Only 30.7% of the practice's visible work sits in this type. Financial services regulatory shows the same pattern: 50 of its 237 deals are regulatory and antitrust deals, against 101 disputes and investigations. An antitrust or regulatory partner whose public record is mostly litigation is the norm. Judge clearance and supervisory experience from the work itself, not from the share of it that was announced.

On settled windows the type fell 19.2%, from 260 deals in the 12 months to September 2025 to 210 in the 12 months to September 2026. All dated deals rose 10.6% over the same windows, from 43,590 to 48,216. The record cannot say why announced regulatory work shrank. It can say the fall belongs to this type and not to the market, because the wider count moved the other way.

On a base of a few hundred matters, a fall of 19.2% is real but small in absolute terms: 50 fewer deals on record. For a firm leader it means fewer public signals of who is busy. Recruiting from deal credits alone will miss most of the bench, and a candidate's own matter list carries more weight in this practice than in any type with a larger record.

Lateral partner hiring in antitrust held flat (+10.1%), from 109 to 120 partners on its own settled windows. Financial services regulatory partner hiring rose 40.2%, from 82 to 115. Neither line tracks the deal count. The firms differ too. None of the ten firms on the regulatory deal list appears among the top 10 hirers of antitrust lawyers below, which the two lists on this page show name by name. In financial services regulatory, two names cross over: DLA Piper and Sidley Austin rank among its top 10 hirers.

Geography links the two lists. Brussels takes 10.8% of antitrust lateral moves, an index of 1,258 against the whole market and the highest of any city listed for the practice. Washington, DC follows at an index of 223. Antitrust work clusters where competition authorities sit, which favors firms with deep European benches. The firms hiring hardest are building those benches now; the firms on the deal list already have them.

First, treat the regulatory deal record as a list of who is visible, not a measure of who is busy. At 0.4% of dated deals it captures a thin slice of the work, and a candidate's real docket must come from filings and references. Second, expect European competition benches on the other side of a pitch: four of the ten names on the list are European-headquartered, and Brussels is where antitrust hiring over-indexes most. Third, the timing differs by practice. In Sartori & Partners data, antitrust partner hiring was steady, so a firm entering the market is not bidding against a surge. Financial services regulatory partner hiring rose 40.2% on settled windows, so firms that want that bench should move before the pool thins. Fourth, a firm outside the list can join it with one or two well-chosen partners: the leader advised deals in the 11-20 band, not hundreds.