Chillin'Competition

The level of the Annual EU and Spanish Competition Law course directed by Luis Ortiz in Madrid keeps getting better each year (and it´s now on its 14th edition..). It really is hard to find a program with so many excellent speakers participating on it.  Let me give you an example:

The seminar which took place last week was coordinated by Cecilio Madero (Director General at DG COMP), and focused on novelties in the areas of mergers and abusive conduct. Amongst the speakers were Per Helmström (Head of Unit at DG COMP), Nicholas Banasevic (Deputy Head of Unit), Milan Kristof (Référendaire at the ECJ), Ainhoa Veiga (Partner, Araoz y Rueda), Antonio Guerra (Counsel, Uría Menéndez), Juan Jiménez-Laiglesia (Partner, DLA Piper) and Miguel Odriozola (Partner, Clifford Chance).

Yesterday and today another bunch of top-notch speakers such as José Luis Buendía (Partner, Garrigues), Piet Jan Slot (Professor, Leiden University), Jerónimo Maillo (San Pablo CEU University), Carlos Urraca (Legal Service, European Commission), Joaquín Fernández (Head of Unit, DG COMP) or Jorge Piernas (EUI), amongst others, have been dealing with state aids and other public interventions.

Here comes the advertising: If you´re sorry you missed those, and fancy the idea of spending a spring weekend in Madrid you can still register for the last two seminars:

– On the 18th of March I will be coordinating a seminar on the application of competition law to network industries. It will feature:

Jarleth Burke (Partner at Jones Day, London) who will be speaking about the regulation and competition law in the telecoms sector;

Júlia Samsó (Latham&Watkins, London), who will deal with the specificities of the energy sector;

Jasper Sluijs (Tilburg Law and Economics Centre), an expert on network neutrality issues;

Myself, for an overview of the challenges posed by network effects and network industries.

– On the 25th of March there will be another seminar on IP and Competition law coordinated by Alvaro Ramos (Senior corporate counsel at Cisco).  Its three sessions will deal with

“Excessive pricing and copyrights” with Daniel Escoda (Telefónica), and Pablo Hernández (SGAE);

“Standards and Competition Law” with Jennifer Vasta (Senior Legal Counsel, Qualcomm); Miguel Rato (Partner, Shearman&Sterling) and Álvaro Ramos;

“Competition Law in Cloud Computing“, with Jean Yves Art (General Counsel EMEA Microsoft), Tero Louko (Antitrust Counsel, Google), and Luis Ortiz Blanco (Partner, Garrigues).

There are very few seats left, but if anyone´s interested in registering (half prize for those coming outside of Spain) or obtaining more info, you can write here  competencia@ieb.es