Dr. Will 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

Will Taylor provides expert analysis and advice to clients across New Zealand and Australia in matters involving antitrust, regulatory, energy, and financial economics. Clients value his unique blend of competition and regulatory economics and deep expertise in energy and telecommunications. His commitment to providing thoughtful analysis and excellent support was recognized in 2020 with the Lexology Client Choice Award for Competition Economists. In 2022, GCR/Who’s Who Legal: Competition recognised Dr. Taylor as a Future Leader for Competition Economics.

Dr. Taylor seamlessly brings together his extensive experience in regulatory and competition issues, enabling him to provide highly valuable analysis and expertise to businesses regarding market studies and inquiries by governments and regulators. These studies typically assess competition and, if it is lacking, consider regulatory interventions.

Dr. Taylor advises clients on mergers and acquisitions, contracting issues, and allegations of anticompetitive practices. His most recent case experience 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, retail, transport, and waste.

Dr. Taylor has extensive experience in the design and operation of regulatory regimes and access pricing for fixed and mobile communications services, gas and electricity networks, airports, ports, and dairy. These cases included advising regulators and regulated businesses on innovation, incentive mechanisms, financeabilty, expenditure forecasting, uncertainty mechanisms, productivity assessment, and stranding risk for gas networks.

Dr. Taylor’s blend of competition economics and energy sector experience makes him a highly sought-after expert on market design and policy questions in the energy sector. His experience includes advising governments, policymakers, and market participants on wholesale market design, reliability measures, transmission pricing, and market power assessment and mitigation.

He has a long history advising on competition and policy issues in communications and media markets. On competition matters, Dr. Taylor’s experience spans mergers, infrastructure sharing, access pricing, market studies, and spectrum acquisition. On policy matters, he has assessed the social benefits of 5G and connectivity, customer inertia, the role of MVNOs, and coverage/universal service obligations.