Tom is a partner at Geradin Partners, having previously been Legal Director at the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

Tom led the legal team on the Digital Markets Taskforce, set up by the UK Government to advise it on digital regulation.  He also directed the CMA’s influential digital advertising market study, the CMA’s work on setting up the Digital Markets Unit, and its antitrust enforcement cases in the tech sector.  Tom was the only private practice lawyer to be invited to give testimony to the Public Bill Committee of the UK Parliament during the passage of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.  He advises companies on digital regulation in the UK, the EU and other jurisdictions.

Tom advises companies that are under investigation for competition law or consumer law infringements in a variety of sectors, and also those involved in market studies and market investigations. He has significant experience in the banking sector, having led the team that implemented the UK’s Open Banking regulations, which came out of the CMA’s retail banking market investigation.  He has worked on several abuse of dominance cases in the pharmaceutical sector. 

Tom was previously Director of Mergers at the CMA, responsible for the delivery of the CMA’s phase 1 mergers portfolio and liaising with the European Commission. He also guided many of the CMA’s most high-profile phase 2 merger cases such as Sainsbury’s/Asda (groceries) and BT/EE (telecoms). At Geradin Partners, Tom handles clients’ multi-jurisdictional deals that require clearance in many different jurisdictions worldwide. He advised Veolia on the UK merger control aspects of its €13 billion acquisition of Suez, which was cleared with remedies at Phase 2.

He is a regular speaker at competition law conferences and appears frequently in the print and broadcast media, including the BBC Today programme, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg TV.  Tom is also the Chair of Citizens Advice Southwark, a charity providing free confidential advice on issues such as debt, housing, benefits and immigration.

Verity is a counsel in Linklaters’ London Antitrust & Foreign Investment Group and co-head of the UK technology sector team.

Verity has over a decade of experience across advisory, investigatory and transactional aspects of competition law in the EU and the UK, including on vertical and abuse of dominance issues. She is particularly familiar with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, having spent time on secondment to the CMA’s mergers group, during which she sat on the CMA’s Mergers Intelligence Committee. 

James Hill is a Principal based in the London office of RBB Economics, where he has worked since April 2013. Since joining RBB, James has advised on a wide variety of competition cases before the European Commission, domestic competition authorities and courts including in the UK, China, France, Switzerland, Turkey and South Africa.

Catherine is a Director within the Digital Markets Unit at the UK Competition and Markets Authority, where she is responsible for leading work to prepare for the new pro-competition regime for digital markets. She previously led the Digital Markets Taskforce, providing advice to the UK Government on the design and implementation of pro-competition measures for digital markets, building on the proposals put forward by the Digital Competition Expert Panel, chaired by Jason Furman. She also leads the CMA’s work on wider areas of the CMA’s digital markets policy.

Prior to joining the CMA, Catherine worked at the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK’s conduct regulator for financial services in a range of roles including considering competition and innovation within financial services, including a secondment to HM Treasury as Head of FinTech Strategy.