Dr. William S. Taylor

Education

PhD and BCA in Economics, Victoria University of Wellington
BCA with honours in Money and Finance (1^st Class), Victoria University of Wellington

Experience

­Dr. Taylor is a Senior Consultant in NERA's Antitrust and Competition; Energy; and Communications, Media and Internet practices. He provides expert analysis and advice to clients across New Zealand and Australia in matters involving antitrust, regulatory, and financial economics.  Dr. Taylor has a particular focus on issues involving new, disruptive technologies.  

On Energy matters, Dr. Taylor has advised clients on regulatory economics for network businesses (including benchmarking, WACC, asset valuation, and risk allocation between consumers and network owners), electricity transmission pricing reform, transmission governance reform in the gas sector, electricity market reform proposals, and associated inquiries/investigations by policy makers and contractual disputes over prices for pipeline infrastructure.

In the field of competition economics, Dr. Taylor advises clients on mergers and acquisitions, contracting issues, and allegations of anticompetitive practices. His most recent case experience has involved analysis of the antitrust implications of technological disruption in the pay TV, insurance, broadband and news/media markets.  His broader experience spans industries including health care, manufacturing, forestry, retail, agriculture, transport, electricity generation/distribution, and waste.

Dr. Taylor works extensively with large, complex data files. For example, he has helped clients assess damages claims relating to both misrepresentation and collusion by analysing retail scanner data, assessed market definition by analysing geographic data on the location of suppliers and purchasers in specific agricultural sectors and analysed gambling yield data in merger proceedings.

Dr. Taylor also has extensive experience in communications and media markets, having been involved in regulatory proceedings for mobile termination, backhaul, and local loop unbundling. He has also advised on the competition implications of wholesale contracts and mergers in the telecommunications and pay TV markets. In addition, he has advised on auction strategy for spectrum auctions and the competition implications of spectrum acquisition. He is co-author of a report for Google on the how the Internet is helping small businesses compete.

Dr. Taylor's expertise in financial economics is brought to bear in both regulated and unregulated industries on issues such as access pricing, cost of capital, asset valuation issues (including real options), financial modelling of entry/expansion in competition proceedings, and the valuation of complex financial products in fair trading claims.