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. He has extensive experience across the full range of competition matters, notably merger control, market investigations, and cases involving Articles 101 and 102, and their domestic equivalents.
EC merger investigations include ECMR Phase 2 cases Thomson/Reuters, Syniverse/BSG, Universal/BMG, Inco/Falconbridge, and DONG/Elsam/E2. Other high-profile merger cases are British Energy/EDF, Nokia/Siemens (telecommunications equipment joint venture), Arla/Express (including the UK Article 9 reference back at the Competition Commission), and Masterfoods/Royal Canin. In the UK, he has advised on numerous merger cases at the Office of Fair Trading and Competition Commission, ranging from P&O/Stena (Dover-Calais), cleared by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in 1996, to 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, and InBev/Anheuser-Busch, which was cleared unconditionally by the Office of Fair Trading. In addition to his merger defence work, he has also worked for intervenors or complainants in highly complex mergers 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), and Carlton/Granada (for ISBA).
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 identification and design of competition remedies, both in advance and during merger control proceedings, and on the defence of mergers against third-party intervenors.
Dr. Williams is a leading expert on the economics of sectoral inquiries and market investigations, where he has more than a decade's experience. High profile Competition Commission matters include New Motor Cars, the Supply of Milk, Veterinary Medicines, Scottish Milk (and the subsequent Claymore Competition Act cases), Groceries, Rolling Stock, and Payment Protection Insurance, as well as Office of Fair Trading market studies in sectors including pharmacies, pharmaceutical price regulation, pay TV, sports rights, newspaper and magazine distribution, and estate agents.
In regulated markets, he has advised clients on competition policy matters before sectoral regulators including Ofcom and Ofgem. He has also advised on numerous cases under Articles 101 and 102, and national equivalents, including cartel cases and abuse of dominance.
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 market definition, 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 First Class, MPhil, DPhil).
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