Speaker Profile

Dr. Mark Williams Director European Competition Policy, NERA Economic Consulting
Dr. Williams is a Director at NERA, and leads NERA's European competition policy group in London and Brussels. His first involvement in antitrust matters dates to the 1988 GEC/Siemens/Plessey merger, and since 1994 he has acted as lead economic adviser in numerous competition and merger cases before the European Commission, Office of Fair Trading, Competition Commission, and other national competition and regulatory agencies. EC merger investigations include Nokia/Siemens (telecommunications equipment joint-venture), Dong/Elsam/E2, Inco/Falconbridge, Arla/Express (including the UK Competition Commission case following an Article 9 reference), and Masterfoods/Royal Canin. In the UK, his merger defense experience dates to P&O/Stena (Dover-Calais), cleared by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in 1996, through to his recent advice on the merger of British Salt/New Cheshire Salt Works, in which the Competition Commission for the first time fully reversed a provisional SLC finding to clear a merger. He has also worked for intervenors or complainants in highly complex matters including AOL/Time Warner/EMI (for a leading US media company), BSkyB/Manchester United (for NTL and Telewest), Abbey National/Lloyds TSB (for Abbey, defending the hostile bid), Carlton/Granada (for ISBA), and Anglo American/Avmin/Kumba (for the IDC). Dr. Williams has also acted on multiple aspects of merger planning for mergers in contemplation. His work includes advice on the set of feasible merger possibilities for potential bidders, on the design of antitrust remedies, both in advance and during merger control proceedings, and on the defense of mergers against interventions. In the fields of behavioral competition policy and antitrust, Dr. Williams has advised on numerous sectoral inquiries and market investigations, including New Motor Cars, the Supply of Milk, Veterinary Medicines, Scottish Milk (and the subsequent Claymore case), and the UK Review of Pharmacies and Supermarkets. In regulated markets, he has advised clients on competition matters before sectoral regulators including Ofcom and Ofgem. He has also advised on numerous cases under Articles 81 and 82, and national equivalents, including cartel cases, and abuse of dominance. He has an extensive advisory and compliance practice, and advises on issues at the interface of competition policy with state aids, the public sector, intellectual property, and litigation. Dr. Williams' work has encompassed the full range of issues that arise in antitrust. In merger control he has advised on market definition, the economics of unilateral effects and merger simulation, coordinated effects, the economics of bidding markets and auctions, vertical mergers, foreclosure, and portfolio effects. In behavioral antitrust cases he has advised on the economics of price discrimination, predation, excessive pricing, and discounts and rebates, as well as the economics of vertical restraints and distribution, and the empirical analysis of cartels and price-fixing. Before joining NERA, Dr. Williams was the founding director of LBE, the Oxford-based competition policy consultancy acquired by NERA in 2002. Prior to that, he was Fellow in Economics at Exeter College, Oxford, where he specialized in the application of economics to competition policy and competition law. From 1991 to 1997 he taught antitrust economics on the Oxford University BCL Competition Law course and remains a regular speaker on the Oxford BCL and at conferences in the UK, Europe, and the US. Dr. Williams was educated at Oxford University (BA, MPhil, DPhil).