Manufacturing

King & Spalding is a global leader in protecting and enhancing manufacturers’ market share, financial position and risk exposure amidst a competitive and volatile global supply chain. For over 100 years, our team has helped clients in the face of rapidly evolving regulatory pressures and economic uncertainty.

With offices in key global trade and commerce hubs, we leverage our market-leading specialties and industry knowledge to help manufacturing industry players grow the value of their assets and meet their business objectives by ensuring fair trade, compliance with complex regulations, litigation of business-critical matters, mitigation of future risk and disputes, and the successful execution of their critical transactions.

Whether a manufacturer is confronting market-share or price competition investigations, environmental incident response, product liability and class-action disputes, Customs detentions of imports, intellectual property theft, or is developing a greenfield construction project, our team’s multi-disciplinary focus will help manufacturers swiftly address these issues to minimize business disruption and maximize value. 

Our team has decades of experience working on cutting-edge regulatory, litigation, and transactional issues for manufacturers of: aerospace systems, agricultural products, aluminum, home appliances, vehicles, engines and parts, batteries, chemicals, clean energy tech, consumer products, defense systems, electronics and power distribution components, engines, food and beverages, industrial machinery, medical devices, paper, plastics, pharmaceuticals, polysilicon, resource extraction equipment, semiconductors, steel, telecom devices and infrastructure, wood and other products.

Our clients benefit from our strong connections to key agencies and first-hand government experience, which gives us an in-depth understanding of how these agencies operate and the ability to get out in front of emerging issues. Through our integrated offering, we help manufacturers and the businesses that work with them to:

• Improve the value for private equity and shareholders of manufacturing assets by preventing unfairly traded imports from undermining their competitive position.
• Expand market access for exports of their products.
• Advise on espionage, trade secrets, cybersecurity and national foreign investment security reviews, such as those associated with CFIUS.
• Execute investment, M&A and financing transactions integral to private equity investment and exit strategies in the manufacturing sector.
• Secure real estate and other permits for new facilities, and provide compliance assurance, auditing, and environmental management systems for operating facilities.
• Try and arbitrate high-stakes cases across the litigation lifecycle; resolve complex, multiparty disputes; and manage public relations for the most sensitive matters. 
• Navigate state and federal environmental enforcement matters, permitting, remediation, and facility closures.
• Conduct thorough internal investigations and resolve government investigations related to environmental, workplace, antitrust, CFIUS, customs, sanctions, securities, white-collar, among other criminal and civil matters.  
• Provide constructive antitrust counseling and guidance on legitimate arrangements between manufacturing competitors, entry into new markets, product distribution systems and appropriate participation in trade associations and standard-setting organizations.
• Implement business changes such as modifying workforce structures, entering new markets, managing benefits and compensation structures, or applying a unified corporate culture across a global workforce.