Chillin'Competition

We have been silent for a few days, including, for once, on April Fool’s day (which last time around played out quite well; see here). It somehow felt strange to focus on narrow competition law issues with everything happening around, particularly after the Brussels attacks. But here we are, ready to pretend competition law is so important as to deserve your (and our) free time too.

Those of you who attended the Chilllin’Competition conference might remember that in my opening speech I mentioned in passing that a few of our speakers would be changing jobs in the coming weeks. You all know that Jacques Derenne soon after moved from Hogan Lovells to Sheppard Mullin; Alvaro Ramos (then at Cisco) went on to head Qualcomm’s busy global antitrust team, and it has now been made public that another friend of this blog, Kevin Coates, has left the European Commission to join Covington&Burling. Best of luck to all of them, and congratulations to their new employers for their terrific hires!

We will soon be announcing other new positions  😉

And speaking of announcements, a number of friends and readers of the blog have recently asked us to advertise some events; here they are:

-On 15 April the 10^th Junior Competition Law Conference (put together by Sarah Long and Molly Herron) will be taking place in London. This is one event that we have always very gladly advertised. The programme is available here. The topics of this year’s edition are: Brexit? Divergence and convergence in UK and EU competition law & Private enforcement: calm before the storm?  

[Regarding BREXIT, you should read the excellent report drafted by Lawyers In for Britain, a coalition of lawyers -including competition lawyers, like John Davies, the aforementioned Kevin Coates or Stephen Kinsella, among many others. See here. Their efforts show that lawyers can actually be useful to good causes sometimes. Although now that I think about it, if the UK were to leave my firm would probably be the largest EU firm, which should come in handy to our EU and competition law practice  😉 ]

-On 22 April I will be intervening at a Brussels School of Competition Morning Briefing in Brussels to discuss the impact of the ECJ’s Judgments in the cement case. For more info and registrations, click here. I’ll also be teaching there this Friday.

-On 13 June Concurrence’s New Frontiers of Antitrust conference will take place in Paris. It has established itself as one of the big events in the field. Tickets are still available here and you can get one for just above 1,000 euros.

-On 11 and 12 July Newcastle Law School will be holding a conference on “Fossilisation & Innovation in Law”. Among the speakers, there will be a premature fossil in the making (Pablo) and a constant innovator (Bill Kovacic)