Back in 2007, when Michael Hausfeld first set out to build an American-style private antitrust enforcement practice in Europe, the venture seemed like a long shot. At the time few in Europe had ever really considered that a private party could bring antitrust claims, much less actually collect damages. His then-partners at U.S. plaintiffs powerhouse Cohen Milstein Hausfeld & Toll went along with his plans to set up shop in London, but they didn’t share his enthusiasm, especially as expenses for the new European outpost began piling up. “They were violently antagonistic,” recalls Hausfeld, who wound up being forced out of the firm in 2008. “They considered it a Robert Fulton-type steamboat folly,” he says. “No one gave us any possibility of success.” (Cohen Milstein managing partner Steven Toll confirms that the costs of the London office became a big sticking point, although he contends that wasn’t the only reason for Hausfeld’s ouster.)

Almost 10 years later, there’s no denying that Hausfeld, who launched his own firm with its own London office in 2009, was onto something. Over the past six years, the number of private cartel damages claims in Europe has skyrocketed, according to publicly available stats compiled by Hausfeld LLP, from just 18 in 2009 to 64 as of April 2015. And with the EU and the U.K. now instituting new claimant-friendly reforms, and other firms following Hausfeld’s lead into European antitrust plaintiffs work—including Scott + Scott, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Constantine Cannon, among others—the number of claims is expected to continue to soar.

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