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This is the tenth issue of our newsletter on developments in the automotive industry published by Morgan Lewis’s automotive team, adding contributions from around the globe by leveraging the experience of the lawyers in our 29 offices. We counsel our automotive clients on a broad range of industryspecific issues, including matters relating to mergers and acquisitions (M&A), antitrust, litigation, regulatory concerns, intellectual property, and labor and employment.
This issue of Morgan Lewis AUTOMOTIVE, which covers the fourth quarter of 2016, touches on issues relating to the connected car, autonomous vehicles, and other developments in the global automotive markets.
In this issue:
- M&A Developments: Nissan becomes largest shareholder of Mitsubishi Motors; Samsung acquires Harman; VW, Daimler, BMW, and Ford to set up charging network; Infineon acquires lidar supplier Innoluce; Toyota and Suzuki form technological alliance; Knorr-Bremse defeats ZF Friedrichshafen in take-over battle for Haldex; American Axle acquires Metaldyne Performance; Tesla acquires German Grohmann Engineering; Takata seeks restructuring; and Nissan sells its minority stake in Calsonic Kansei.
- Antitrust: US Department of Justice wraps up its auto-parts investigation; the European Commission investigates Brexit-related promises made by the British government to Nissan; China threatens to impose a fine on an undisclosed US OEM for monopolistic behavior; South Korea fines Japanese automotive suppliers for price fixing; and a European General Motors car distributor is fined for resale price maintenance.
- Regulatory: United States publishes a policy on best practices for cybersecurity for cars; Russia obliges automakers receiving subsidies to open service centers in Crimea; automakers may miss European CO2 targets; three OEMs may face sales bans in Korea; Germany investigates VW chairman for criminal market manipulation; and defeat devices continue to remain in the spotlight.
- Intellectual Property: Tessera announced a new open-source development platform for image processing; Ford boosts its patent production; cyber theft of IP continues to be an area of concern for automotive companies; and federal marshals seize knock-off parts at SEMA show.