The Competition Law in Financial Services Summit

Al is a Partner in Addleshaw Goddard's Competition practice. He has nearly 20 years of experience advising on complex competition, merger control, State aid/subsidy control and "antitrust-led regulation", including client secondments to BP, RBS (twice) and Sainsbury's.  He has particular expertise in regulated sectors, including financial services/payments, energy, groceries (GSCOP), transport, telecoms, and healthcare.

Simon Burden is head of EU and competition law at Natwest Bank.

Simon has 16 years of experience across all aspects of competition law, including merger control, market investigations, cartel investigations, and litigation. He has experience in private practice (Norton Rose Fulbright), competition authorities (the CMA), and in the banking (HSBC and Natwest) and telecoms (Vodafone) industries. As part of his role at Natwest, Simon has oversight of the management of the direct and indirect FDI (particularly UK NSI Act) compliance risks that Natwest manages, as a financial institution.

Josh’s practice covers all aspects of competition law and regulation, including communications, energy, financial services and data. He was recognised in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 2021 list, which described him as “the king of Competition”. The directories single him out as “one of very best competition / EU lawyers of his generation”, “a superstar” who “marries technical expertise and strategic excellence”. He was selected as Legal 500’s Competition law Silk of the Year for 2022.

He is experienced in dealing with the most complex disputes, typically involving heavy economic and technical evidence and/or raising novel legal issues. He appears regularly before UK and EU Courts and regulators; and has also advised on competition and regulatory matters arising in many other jurisdictions.  His clients range from major multinationals to small firms, as well as national governments and regulatory authorities from around the world.

Daniel Schwarz advises on all areas of competition law including mergers and acquisitions, cartels, abuses of market power, market investigations, and subsidies, as well as FDI reviews.

Daniel is also a Legal Fellow at Cambridge University's Centre for Finance, Technology & Regulation. His research addresses the application of competition policy to FinTech from legal and economic perspectives. He has delivered lectures at Oxford University, HM Treasury, the OECD, the Centre for Competition Policy and the Bank of Spain. He has had articles published on topics including financial services, insurance, merger control and free trade agreements. He is a winner of the Highly Commended prize in the Law Society Competition Section’s Horsfall-Turner essay competition.

He previously worked as a Counsel at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, advising on international finance, trade and competition law. He was an author of a leading IMF report on Rising Corporate Market Power which was launched with Senator Amy Klobuchar and Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. He was previously seconded from Clifford Chance to the Strategy & Competition Division at the Financial Conduct Authority. He holds degrees in economics from the University of Warwick and law from the University of Nottingham.

Julia is a Partner in the Competition, EU and Trade group in Eversheds Sutherland’s London office. She has 20 years of experience advising clients on EU and UK competition issues across a broad range of matters including:

• application of competition law to strategic collaborations, trade practices and agreements (including information sharing)
• abuse of dominance as well as representing clients who are the subject of regulatory investigation
• Julia has a particular focus advising clients subject to cartel investigations as well as competition issues in the Financial Services sector

She also advises extensively on competition law compliance, including implementing global compliance programs as well as devising and delivering face-to-face and online training.

Julia spent six months on secondment to the Competition and Markets Authority as a Deputy Director in the Cartels and Criminal Enforcement Unit where she gained particular experience in managing leniency applications and criminal casework. She also spent an extended period on secondment in-house to American Express as acting head of anti-trust and payments regulation for EMEA.

She is a regular speaker on competition law issues and is recognized in The Legal 500. Julia is also a Diversity sponsor partner in Eversheds Sutherland’s London office

Daniela leads the competition team at Santander UK, responsible for strategic oversight and management of all competition-related matters across the bank, and chairs the global Santander antitrust working group.  She has also held a number of legal and compliance leadership roles across the bank. Prior to joining Santander, Daniela was an associate at Slaughter and May (London and Brussels) and Shearman & Sterling (London).  Daniela has extensive experience advising on and leading projects across all pillars of UK and EU competition law, including merger and market inquiries, antitrust, enforcement, compliance, litigation, policy and regulation.

Ingrid Vandenborre is the partner in charge of Skadden’s Brussels office and co-head of Skadden’s European Antitrust/Competition practice. Her practice focuses on EU and international merger control and competition law enforcement.

Ms. Vandenborre has been consistently named as a leading practitioner in Who’s Who Legal guides in both competition and life sciences, as well as repeatedly in Chambers Global, Chambers Europe and The Legal 500 EMEA. In 2023, she was named Antitrust & Competition Lawyer of the Year at the Women in Business Law EMEA Awards. Ms. Vandenborre also was named Lawyer of the Year by Global Competition Review in 2022, was selected to GCR’s Women in Antitrust list in 2021 and was recognized for her representation of Aspen Pharmacare in relation to the European Commission’s (EC) Article 102 investigation of the company’s pricing practices, which was named European Behavioural Matter of the Year by the publication. In addition, she was named a 2021 Competition MVP by Law360, a 2021 Litigation Star for Belgium - Competition/Antitrust by Benchmark Litigation Europe and Competition Lawyer of the Year at Benchmark Litigation Europe’s 2020 Awards, which also recognized her work advising Aspen as an Impact Case of the Year. She currently serves as nongovernmental adviser to the intergovernmental International Competition Network.

Michelle Yip is currently Managing Associate General Counsel at HSBC Group, where she is Head of Competition Law for the global Commercial, Wealth and Personal Banking businesses.  She advises on all aspects of competition law including merger control, cartel investigations, market reviews and compliance. She is based in London and has spent time working in HSBC Hong Kong overseeing competition law matters in the Asia-Pacific region.

Prior to joining HSBC in 2013, Michelle was an Associate at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and has worked in their London, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai offices.

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 the new regulatory regime for ‘digital gatekeepers’ such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.  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 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), Illumina/PacBio (genome sequencing) and BT/EE (telecoms).

Outside the tech sector, Tom 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 pharma sector.

Before joining the CMA, Tom advised companies on UK and EU competition law at the international law firm, Hogan Lovells.  He spent time on secondment to the major broadcaster, ITV plc, and the UK’s Office of Fair Trading.  He is a regular speaker at competition law conferences.

Outside of work, Tom is on the Board of Trustees of Citizens Advice Southwark, a charity providing free confidential advice on issues such as debt, housing, benefits and immigration.

Graeme is the FCA’s Director of Competition responsible for the FCA’s competition work.  Graeme has been at the FCA since 2014. Prior to his current role Graeme was the FCA’s Deputy Chief Economist and Head of Department for Economic and Financial Analysis for five years, having previously been a manager in the FCA’s Competition Division. Before joining the FCA, Graeme spent nearly ten years at the Competition Commission (now the Competition and Markets Authority) as Director of Remedies, Business and Financial Analysis, and as an Economic Adviser. Graeme’s experience also includes five years as an economic consultant with Deloitte and Andersen.

Ed Smith is Head of Department in Competition at the FCA where he heads the Department responsible for Competition Policy. He is also FCA Director for the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF).

He joined the FCA in November 2014 as the Head of Department for Banking, Lending and Distribution in Policy before heading the Department responsible for supervising Barclays, HSBC, Co-op, TSB, and other Retail Banks

Prior to FCA, Ed was an Inquiry Director at the Competition and Markets Authority where he led a number of market studies and market investigations including Workplace pensions and retail banking. Ed previously worked as a Government Economist in OFT, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the UK Representation to the EU and on secondment at the European Commission. Even further back he did a Phd in Economics and was an economics lecturer and consultant.

Julian is head of the firm’s London Litigation and Arbitration team.

He is recognised as one of Europe’s leading dispute resolution lawyers in the main legal directories which have described him as “‘superb’ and the ‘go-to name, simple as that’”, “‘a master of litigation procedure and tactics’”, “among the best trial lawyers in the UK” and “‘simply superb; he is one of the best litigators around and stays exceptionally close to the detail without ever losing sight of the bigger picture’”.

Julian was named as the leading litigator in Europe at The American Lawyer’s inaugural Transatlantic Legal Awards. He is ranked in the following areas in the leading legal directories: Banking Litigation; Commercial and Transactions Litigation; Competition/Antitrust Litigation; IT Litigation; and Telecommunications Litigation. He is also ranked as a ‘Dispute Resolution Star’ in Benchmark Litigation (Europe) and has been admitted to the Legal 500’s ‘Hall of Fame’ for Premium Commercial Litigation.

Julian specialises in the resolution of large, high-stakes and complex business and regulatory disputes and investigations. He has extensive experience of litigation before the English Courts (up to and including the Supreme Court), the resolution of complaints, disputes and investigations before a number of regulatory authorities, international arbitration under the auspices of many of the major institutional rules, expert determination and other forms of ADR.

He has acted in: a number of the largest and leading technology, outsourcing and communications cases to come before the English Courts; high-profile competition/antitrust cases and investigations; major cross-border investigations; complex banking disputes; major fraud litigation; as well as other high-profile business disputes.

Julian has acted for a number of the world’s leading companies (particularly those operating in the finance and TMT sectors) as well as governments.

Sarah Abram KC was called in 2006 and took silk in 2022; she is described in the directories as “a star of both the present and the future”.  

Sarah acts as lead counsel in the most high-profile litigation and arbitration across the fields of competition, EU and commercial law.  Her wide-ranging practice involves multi-jurisdiction and multi-party cases, raising novel points of law.

In addition to commercial and competition disputes of all varieties, Sarah regularly acts in class action litigation, FRAND litigation, matters involving data/big tech and regulatory appeals.  Current and recent highlights include acting for Telefonica in the 3-month trial of the litigation regarding the collapse of Phones4U (The Lawyer Top 20 case for 2022); leading for BMW in an important expedited appeal to the CAT regarding the scope of the CMA’s powers post-Brexit; leading defendant teams in CPO litigation including Rail Fares, RoRo and Crypto-currency, and other group litigation including Emissions; acting as sole counsel for the successful claimant in the Commercial Court trial Acerus v Recipharm; leading on global FRAND issues in Nokia v Oppo.  She is instructed in substantially every large competition damages matter of the day, including Trucks, FX and Power Cables.

Current directories include comments that Sarah has an “[i]ncredible knack of being on top of everything all of the time, from the high level strategy to the finer detail”, is “[v]ery proactive, will drive a case forward” and is a “very skilled advocate” who “is incredibly quick and charming”. She was nominated as EU and Competition Junior of the Year in the Legal 500 UK Bar Awards 2019 and in 2020.

Sarah speaks fluent French and some German.  She is called to the Irish Bar and is a member of the Irish Law Library, enabling her to continue acting in cases before the courts of the EU post-Brexit.

Sarah won the award for Pro Bono Junior of the Year in 2021, and is a Trustee of Advocate (formerly the Bar Pro Bono Unit). 

Adam is the Director for Issuing and Acceptance at UK Finance, the trade body for banking, finance and payments firms.

His core expertise is in card issuing and acquiring. He joined UK Finance in June 2023, having spent 8 years as Barclaycard Payments’ head of legal. He also has general banking and asset finance experience. He has a particular interest in payments regulation and competition policy and in accessibility of payments for all, especially the visually impaired.

He is a trustee board member of Sensory Services by Sight for Surrey, which delivers essential services for blind, visually impaired, Deaf (sign) and deaf (impaired) adults and children in Surrey.

Christopher Duff advises Crédit Agricole CIB on UK and EU competition law. He previously practiced at Clifford Chance, with secondments to Barclays and JP Morgan.

Sharon is a senior lawyer with extensive experience in competition law and the promotion of competition in the regulated sectors.

Currently a Director at the CMA working across the CMA’s Legal Service and its Policy & International team, she has been involved in overseeing the CMA’s concurrency function since she joined the CMA in 2014. Before joining the CMA, Sharon worked in the legal team at Ofcom, having previously been at Postcomm following a brief period at the Office of Fair Trading in the Cartels and Criminal Enforcement Group. Prior to that Sharon was a counsel in the Competition/Antitrust group at Linklaters.

Bruce is a partner in Linklaters’ London Antitrust & Foreign Investment team. Prior to joining the firm, he was Head of Antitrust and Foreign Investment at a leading international law firm. Bruce has around 25 years’ experience advising clients on complex cases. He regularly represents clients before the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and other agencies, including the Investment Security Unit (ISU) of the Cabinet Office.

Bruce is recognised as a leading practitioner in the major directories (Legal 500 Hall of Fame) with a diverse practice which spans high profile merger control proceedings, antitrust enforcement (cartel defence and related appeals/damages actions) and foreign direct investment (FDI) investigations.

Rikki Haria is a partner in the Antitrust, Competition and Trade group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP.

His practice spans the full range of competition law matters, including merger control and foreign investment reviews, antitrust investigations and market inquiries.

As a member of the firm’s global tech practice and having spent time working in Silicon Valley, Rikki advises a broad range of tech and digital platform businesses, including on merger reviews, regulatory investigations, and the interplay between antitrust, data privacy and consumer protection laws. He also has a particular focus on the telecoms, financial services, retail and consumer products sectors, having advised on various mergers, market studies and market investigations in these sectors.

Rikki helps clients to navigate complex regulatory environments, including behavioural investigations, new digital regulation (such as the EU Digital Markets Act and forthcoming UK regulatory regime) and new and emerging technologies (such as artificial intelligence and the metaverse). He also regularly advises on high-profile and cross-border M&A, managing the process of securing merger control and foreign investment clearances around the world. Notable examples include Adobe/Figma, MasMovil/Orange, Tesco/Booker and Apollo/Verizon.

Rikki has extensive experience before the CMA and European Commission, including through his time on secondment to the CMA’s mergers unit.

Eliza is an antitrust expert, advising on all matters of competition law and compliance.

Eliza is a Director of Antitrust Compliance in Deutsche Bank’s Global Markets division based in London. Eliza is advising and coordinating antitrust matters globally at Deutsche Bank in this role. Previously, Eliza worked at the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA’s) legal service advising project teams across all tools of competition law. Eliza has also extensive private practice experience in the field of competition law. Eliza was a Partner at International law firm Holman Fenwick and Willan based in London and has worked for Squire Patton Boggs in Brussels in a senior associate role.  Eliza has also trained with DG Competition in Brussels (antitrust and State aid units). She has developed an interest and expertise in the application of antitrust in several sectors, including the financial services and TMT. She has represented clients before the European Courts in Luxembourg on EU matters, including on competition law, trade law, public procurement, debt recovery related matters and damages actions.

Eliza has conducted several dawn raids and has developed bespoke competition law compliance programmes to address different commercial and business needs. She is a UK qualified solicitor before the Senior Courts of England and Wales and a European qualified lawyer and is a member of the Law Society of England & Wales and the Athens Bar. Eliza holds an LLM (Business and Commercial Law) from King’s College London and also a Master of Arts in the Economics of Competition Law from the same University.

Mark is a Senior Associate in Milbank’s London Litigation and Arbitration Group.

He specialises in the resolution of complex international disputes in the information technology, energy/infrastructure and finance sectors, with a particular focus on competition litigation.

Mark has acted for clients in some of the most high-profile competition claims brought in recent years, including in relation to alleged infringements of competition law relating to the setting and implementation of multilateral interchange fees associated with the use of debit and credit cards. He is also acting in a High Court claim in relation to alleged infringements of competition law and misrepresentations arising out of the setting of USD LIBOR. Mark also represents and advises clients in relation to international sanctions and arbitration.

Dan joined the PSR in January 2024 as its Head of Strategy and Intelligence.

Prior to this, he was the Director of Rail Strategy and Analysis at the Department for Transport (DfT), having previously worked at the Competition and Markets Authority - where, amongst other things, he led projects into various aspects of financial services.

At the DfT, Dan led a broad range of strategy, analysis, and innovation projects across rail – delivering positive outcomes at a time of massive change and challenge - particularly as rail responded to Brexit and the Covid pandemic. This ranged from leading delivery of major rail funding decisions, through to rail regulatory strategy and supporting international rail.

Natalie has broad experience advising on all aspects of EU and UK competition law, including cartels, mergers, behavioural antitrust and competition litigation and across a range of sectors, including financial services, media and consumer goods.

Before joining Euclid Law in September 2019, Natalie spent 5 years working in the competition law team of Lloyds Banking Group. Prior to that, she was a Senior Associate at Clifford Chance.

Natalie is dual qualified in England & Wales and in Spain and has been recognised as one of 30 most notable in-house competition professionals in her 30s (Women@competition/Parr, February 2017).

Katharine Wilson is a Director in the Competition Legal Team at Barclays.

She advises on competition law compliance as well as market studies, market investigations and merger control. Prior to joining Barclays in 2011, Katharine spent several years in private practice.

Jen has joined the DRCF core team on secondment from the Competition and Markets Authority, where she has directed enforcement projects since 2014. Prior to this Jen was Deputy Director of Legal Services at the Office of Rail and Road, having trained and worked as solicitor specialising in dispute resolution.

Jack Wilson is VP Policy & Research at TrueLayer where he leads engagement with UK and EU regulators and authorities, and sits on a number of committees as a fintech and regulatory expert.

He is a former policy adviser at the UK banking regulator the FCA. There he led work to create the FCA’s approach to regulating firms under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and open banking rules. 

Domilė Butkevičiūtė is an associate director in BRG’s European Competition practice. She has almost ten years of experience working as a competition economist in economic consulting and for a financial regulator.

Dr. Butkevičiūtė has supported clients on competition policy issues across jurisdictions and industries. She has particular expertise and knowledge of the economics of multisided markets and switching behavior, as well as competition and regulatory issues in the payments sector. She has provided economic advice to clients in the context of abuse of dominance cases, market investigations, mergers, litigations, state aid, disputes, and international arbitration, as well as European regulations including the Digital Markets Act, Section 19a, and the IFR (Interchange Fee Regulation).

Charles Damen is Chief Product Officer at A2A payments infrastructure provider platform Token.io.

He is a member of the Payments Board and chair of the Open Banking Working Group at UK Finance and a member of the General Assembly of the European Payments Council (EPC). 
Prior to joining Token.io, Charles was SVP Product Strategy at Worldpay, responsible for Open Banking and Real Time Payments. Before Worldpay Charles co-founded Thunes enabling global real time cross border payments. Prior to Thunes, Charles held senior roles at Bumble and Syniverse and co-founded the mobile messaging business Mobile365 which was sold to SAP. Charles holds a dual Bachelor Degree in European Business from the International School of Economics Rotterdam (ISER) in the Netherlands and from Groupe Ecole Supérieure de Commerce (ESC) Bordeaux in France.

Pietro joined at the beginning of this year the Payment System Regulator as Deputy General Counsel, where he leads legal advice on competition, compliance and enforcement matters, including the ongoing market reviews (cross-border interchange fees; scheme and processing fees).

Previously, Pietro was a Legal Director at the Competition and Markets Authority, where he worked across a wide range of antitrust, mergers and market investigations (most recently focussing on digital work, including mergers and antitrust investigations into self-preferencing conduct by tech companies). He holds a law degree from UCLouvain and masters from King’s College London (LLM) and Imperial College (MBA).

Sarah is the Head of the Competition Group in the Innovation department. 

Sarah is a very experienced litigator, specialising in competition litigation, with particular experience acting for claimants in complex, high profile cases involving competition law based claims or defences.  Sarah has represented clients in leading competition damages claims in the English courts and in arbitrations.

Sarah also assists businesses that find themselves under investigation by Competition Regulators and businesses that are concerned about the way their affairs may have been conducted - attending Dawn Raids, advising on defence strategies, assisting with responses to information requests, applying for leniency from fines (where appropriate), assessing potential civil liabilities, and making submissions.

Sarah has been recognised as a recommended individual for Competition Litigation in Chambers & Partners and Legal 500, who have recognised her as "a great team leader in litigation matters."

Sarah is a member of the Law Society Competition Section, ABA Antitrust Law Section and Competition Law Association.

Sam Marden is a director in CRA’s European Competition Practice. Sam is an empirical micro-economist, with an expertise in applied econometrics.

Since joining CRA Sam has provided advice and economic analysis on competition issues raised in a variety of merger cases before the CMA and elsewhere. Sam’s experience covers a range of work for industries including transport, media, payments and retail with a focus on two-sided markets and technology.

Prior to joining CRA in February 2018, Sam was a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University of Sussex. He holds a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics, where he also worked as a teaching fellow. He was a Royal Economic Society junior fellow and his research has been published in Economic Journal.

Leonardo leads Public affairs at Teya, a pan-European FinTech dedicated to serving the needs of small local businesses.

In this role, Leonardo engages with regulators and policymakers in the UK and EU on issues that affect the way SMBs engage with the digital economy. Teya advocates for a more just and competitive financial services landscape that can unlock more growth for small local businesses.