Speaker details

Biography

John began his career in 1994 as a consulting economist specializing in regulation and competition, working on mergers (such as HP/Compaq), regulatory reviews in gas, electricity and airports and privatization of utilities. Since joining Compass Lexecon in 2016, John has advised clients on mergers and abuse of dominance cases in the EU and UK, follow-on litigation for cartel damages and on matters relating to intellectual property rights and technical standards. Notable cases include: • Article 102 investigations by the European Commission in the tech, pharmaceutical and consumer goods sectors. • Ch1 and Ch 2 investigation of pharmaceutical supplier, UK CMA • Mergers in EU, UK and South Africa • Supporting complainants in abuse of dominance claims, UK and European competition authorities • Cartel damages: follow-on claims in UK courts In between these periods working in consulting, John spent 12 years in several public sector roles: • He was Director of Economic Analysis and then Chief Economist at the UK Competition Commission (CC), leading the CC’s team of economists and responsible for economic analysis on all the CC’s cases, including the major Groceries, Airports and Payment Protection Insurance market investigations, merger investigations such as BSkyB/ITV and Somerfield/Morrisons as well as regulatory reviews in energy, telecoms and transport. • He was the founding Chief Executive of the Competition Commission of Mauritius, establishing the organization and leading its first cases. • He led the OECD’s competition law and policy team, organizing regular ‘roundtable’ meetings of competition agency heads from around the world and supervising the analytical papers produced for those events. John also led the OECD’s capacity-building programmes for newer agencies in Asia and Eastern Europe and advised Governments at ministerial level on competition policy.