Charles Tingley
Charles Tingley is a partner in the Competition & Foreign Investment Review practice. He advises domestic and international clients on many aspects of Canadian competition and foreign investment review law, including mergers, criminal and civil investigations, misleading advertising and other pricing, distribution and general compliance matters. He has experience representing firms under civil and criminal investigation by the Competition Bureau and in major litigation before the Competition Tribunal and the courts.
Charles has experience in a wide variety of industries, including credit card issuing and acceptance, the grocery sector, carrier and postal services, pharmacies, electricity generation and distribution, building materials, packaging, timber milling, real estate and real estate brokering, newspapers, equipment finance, and transportation.
Prior to rejoining the firm in 2012, Charles was Deputy General Counsel at the New Zealand Commerce Commission, which has responsibility for enforcing competition and fair trading law. In that role, Charles managed the in-house legal team and had strategic management responsibilities for the Commission's major litigation portfolio. He was lead in-house counsel in a variety of complex competition proceedings before all levels of court in New Zealand and represented the Commission in negotiating settlements involving competition remedies and financial penalties. In addition to litigation work, Charles advised the Commission on merger review, the use of investigative powers, and the drafting of enforcement guidelines and policies, including those related to cartel immunity and leniency. He also provided advice in relation to board governance matters.
Matters in which Charles acted as counsel to the New Zealand Commerce Commission included, among others, those in relation to:
- the Visa and MasterCard rules around credit card interchange fees and credit card acceptance by merchants, leading to a precedent-setting settlement modifying key aspects of the applicable credit card scheme rules in New Zealand;
- alleged cartel conduct in relation to the provision of air cargo services to and from New Zealand;
- cartel conduct in the freight forwarding industry;
- alleged misuse of market power by incumbent telecommunications carrier, Telecom, in relation to dial-up internet services and in relation to the wholesale supply of 'data tails' required for the provision of data transmission services; and
- the blocked acquisition of Mana Coach Services by New Zealand Bus Ltd.
Prior to first joining Davies as an associate in 2001, Charles attended the University of Edinburgh in 1999/2000, where he studied competition and trade law of the European Union. He spent his articles of clerkship at the Federal Court of Appeal in Ottawa.