EU: Antitrust appointments for McDermott and Italy’s Gattai

Appointments in Brussels and Rome see new leadership arise in both cities for McDermott Will & Emery and Gattai Minoli Agostinelli & Partners, respectively.

In Brussels, Jacques Buhart will take over from Philip Bentley QC as the head of McDermott Will & Emery’s Brussels office. Bentley, who is staying with the firm, will continue in practice, working on EU competition law issues.

He had managed the office for seven years, as one of the founding partners of the Brussels practice following his legacy firm’s merger with McDermott, which saw Bentley and fellow silk, Clive Stanbrook QC, move to the US firm, where they developed a strong practice in cartel defence work, single firm dominance issues, and class action cases.

The firm acted for a variety of clients in merger control proceedings and such work is important; speaking to CDR late last year, Ray Jacobsen, global head of McDermott’s antitrust and competition practice group, said that the firm expected to see increased coordination and cooperation between US and EU competition officials in 2016.

Jacobsen citied the merger control approval of GE/Alstom as an example, where the transaction “received remedies on both sides of the ‘pond’, a big difference from what happened years ago in GE/Honeywell”.

Also welcoming new leadership is Italian corporate law firm Gattai Minoli Agostinelli & Partners, which has opened a new antitrust department, led by Silvia D’Alberti.

D’Alberti, whose hire increases the numbers of partners to 21, joins from Allen & Overy, where she was a partner and the head of the Italian antitrust department for many years. Previously, she worked for five years at Italy’s competition and markets authority, where she also served as co-director of its energy and public services investigations bureau.

D’Alberti has extensive experience at both Italian and European level for competition and consumer protection matters, thanks to her extensive 20-year career representing large Italian and multinational companies in proceedings concerning alleged concentrations, collusions, abuses, unfair market practices, antitrust damages actions and administrative litigation.

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