Introduction of Speakers and their Presentations
ST. MARTIN’S CONFERENCE 2015
RECENT TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS IN COMPETITION LAW AND POLICY
Wednesday, 11 November 2015
PANEL I: WHAT'S NEW IN COMPETITION LAW AND POLICY
Overview of the latest trends and developments in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the EU during the last year
Michael Mikulík
Vice-chairman; Czech Competition Authority
Michael Mikulík graduated from the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague (2002) and from Cambridge University (2008) where his postgraduate studies (LL.M.) focus was primarily on European competition law. He has been working for the Office for the Protection of Competition (Office) since 2010, initially as Adviser to the Chairman and then as Director of the Dominance and Vertical Agreements Department. From 2013 he was head of the Appeals Division and a member of appellate committees of the Office. In October 2015 he was appointed to the position of Vice Chairman of the Office in charge of protection of competition. Before joining the Office he worked in the field of advocacy.
Michael Mikulík specializes in the field of competition, administrative and public procurement law. He regularly represents the Office at meetings organized by adviser bodies of the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission, the Competition Commission of the OECD and other international platforms working on protection of competition and competition policy development. He also contributes as author and co-author in foreign professional publications dealing with competition law issues.
Michal Petr
Czech Competition Authority
Michal Petr is an assistant professor at International and European Law Department of the Faculty of Law of Palacky University Olomouc and at the Faculty of Economics and Administration of the Masaryk University. He has been teaching European law with the focus on competition law, state aid, public procurement and regulation of network industries. He gained extensive experience in such areas during his carrier in the Office for the Protection of Competition. He worked for the Office from the year 2003 as a director of Legislative Unit and from the year 2010 till October 2015 as a Vice-chairman of the Office.
He authored numerous publications on competition law, sector regulation and on particular issues of due process. He is a member of the editorial board of the magazine Antitrust, national contributor to publications European Networks Law and Regulation Quarterly and a member of science board of Faculty of Economics and Administration of the Masaryk University Brno.
Radoslav Tóth
Vice-chairman; Slovak Competition Authority
Radoslav Toth has been a Vice-Chairman of the Slovak Competition Authority since July 2012. Before that, he worked for the law office LAWCORP. In his practice he focused on competition law and international transactions. He graduated at the Faculty of Law of Comenius University in Bratislava (2002) and obtained a postgraduate degree at the London School of Economics (2007). Mr Toth is an external lecturer on Competition Law at the Faculty of Law of the Charles University.
Petr Zákoucký
Senior Lawyer; Clifford Chance LLP
Petr Zákoucký is a Senior Associate at Clifford Chance in Prague and leads the office's energy, competition and public procurement practice. He represents clients in the development of new projects, M&A, joint venture projects and disputes in the Czech Republic as well as within the region. Within its regulatory practice, he also regularly lectures at conferences (including, for instance, conferences of TOPGAS, CEPKON, Office for the Protection of Competition) and at the retreats of the energy section of the Union of In-House Lawyers. He spent a half a year with the Clifford Chance competition team in Brussels. Before joining Clifford Chance in 2006, Mr Zákoucký worked for the law firm White & Case; he also completed internships with the General Court in Luxembourg and with the European Commission's DG Competition in Brussels. He obtained a master's degree in law from Charles University in Prague (2002), within which completed a one-year exchange study programme at the Faculty of Law in Manchester (2001). He also completed LL.M. study programmes in Tuebingen (2004) and Amsterdam (2005).
Special Lecture: Ordoliberalism and its significance in current comtetition
Peter Behrens
Hamburg University
Prof. Dr. Peter Behrens, M.C.J. (New York University), is Professor emeritus at the Law Faculty of the University of Hamburg and Member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for European Integration at the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg. He has taught as Visiting Professor at the Law Schools of the Universities of Chicago and Michigan (Ann Arbor). He continues teaching in postgraduate Master programs at the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg (Hamburg), the College of Europe (Bruges), the Central European University (Budapest) and the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). He publishes in the field of European Union Law, in particular European Competition Law; he is, among others, co-editor of the Europäische Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsrecht (Beck, Munich).
PANEL II: More Economic Approach
Milan Brouček
Economist; Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission
Milan Brouček studied economics and management at Military University of Ground Forces in Vyškov, Faculty of National Defense Economics. In 2000-2004 he worked as a teacher and analyst. In 2004 he began to work for the Office for the Protection of Competition as a director of the Economic department and since the beginning of 2009 as the Chief Economist. From May 2012 he worked as Chief Economist at the Slovak Competition Authority and in April 2013 he has joined the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission. Mïlan Brouček has also been lecturing Competition Economics at the Masaryk University in Brno, Faculty of Economics and Administration.
Daniel Donath
Lawyer; CRA
Daniel Donath currently works for the company Charles River Associates (CRA). Prior to this position he provided adviser services to the Czech energy incumbent ČEZ on competition and regulatory issues and he was a member of the Chief Economist team at the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission. From 2008 to 2010 Daniel Donath also served as a member of the Appellate Committee of the Czech Competition Authority. He specializes in providing expert economic advice in the area of mergers and acquisitions, agreements among undertakings, cartels and abuse of dominant position in the market and in the area of state aid and state regulation. During his career, he represented dozens of companies across a wide range of industries such as air transport, energy, FMCG, financial services and others before the European Commission, European courts, national competition and regulatory authorities and within international arbitrations. He gained a doctorate in economics in Pennsylvania State University; he frequently speaks at conferences and teaches competition economics at the Masaryk University in Brno.
Tony Curzon Price
British Competition Authority
Tony Curzon Price is an economist at the Competition and Markets Authority in London where he has focused for the past 3 years on market investigations. He has a PhD from UCL that looked at modelling strategies for market design problems with a specific attention to auctions. He has been a businessman and a journalist. He has taken a special interest in antitrust in the face of rapid technological change.
Alexis Walckiers
Economist; Belgian Competition Authority
Dr. Alexis Walckiers is the chief economist of the Belgian competition authority. He sits on the board of the Authority and advises competition prosecutors on economic issues surrounding mergers and competition investigations. He also teaches Advanced microeconomics at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Prior to joining the Belgian competition authority, Alexis worked for Oxera, an economics consultancy, where he specialized in the economics of competition law and financial regulation.
He holds a PhD in economics from Ecares-ULB and degrees in Physics and Philosophy. He has published a number of articles in competition policy and economics journals, including the Journal of the European Economic Association.
PANEL III: Multilateral Interchange Fees
David Anderson
Partner; Berwin Leighton Paisner
Dave Anderson is a partner in Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP's Competition, EU & Competition Law team and is the Managing Partner of its Brussels office. He is a dual US/UK national and is qualified to practice law in the US and UK and is a member of the Brussels Bar. Dave has practiced in London and Brussels in the EU and international competition law field for nearly 20 years.
His practice focuses on EU and international merger, cartel and abuse of dominance cases. He also advises on EU regulatory law, transport law and on communications and public affairs strategies. In the area of merger control, Dave regularly represents global corporations on international transactions before the European Commission and national antitrust and sectoral regulators around the world. He specialises in handling complex multijurisdictional merger reviews and has led and coordinated filings and reviews in most major jurisdictions with merger control regimes. In the area of cartels, Dave has extensive experience representing companies involved in cartel proceedings before the European Commission and other antitrust agencies. He has advised clients in relation to a number of the largest international cartel cases in the chemical, energy, mining and hi-tech sectors. In the area of dominance and monopolies, Dave advises multinational companies on pricing and behavioural compliance issues as well as parties damaged by non-compliance. Dave has represented clients in many sectors in connection with complaints to and investigations by regulators worldwide on abuse of dominance issues.
Dave is also very active on the policy side of international antitrust. He serves as a non-governmental adviser to the European Commission on the work of the International Competition Network (ICN). He has also advised the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and many national competition agencies on competition law reform and agency capacity building in Europe, Asia and Africa.
Dave is recognised as a leading international antitrust lawyer by Chambers, Legal 500, Legal Business and PLC’s Which Lawyer.
Christoph Baert
Senior Business Leader; Europe Region Counsel; MasterCard Worldwide
Christoph Baert joined MasterCard Europe’s predecessor Europay International in 1993 and is in charge of European and Regulatory Affairs. Within the Law Department, his responsibilities include monitoring legislative and regulatory initiatives, competition law compliance, SEPA implementation and Central Bank Oversight. His day-to-day activities include representing MasterCard Europe’s interests when dealing with domestic and international regulatory authorities.
Christoph graduated from Leuven University (B) in 1989 with a Law degree, and was later awarded a Masters of Law (LLM) degree in European law at King’s College London (UK). Prior to joining MasterCard Europe, Mr. Baert was a trainee at the EC Commission and an associate at the law firm Coudert Brothers in Brussels.
Tomáš Kubeša
Lawyer; Czech Competition Authority
Tomáš Kubeša works at the Cartel Department of the Czech competition authority. The competences of this department include investigating horizontal agreements and also the decisions of associations. He regularly represents the authority at the meetings of the European Competition Network and other international events. He also took part in the educational programme for public procurers focusing on bid-rigging.
Tomáš Kubeša graduated at the Faculty of Law of the Masaryk University in Brno, where he continues his academic activities focusing especially on the relation between competition law and intellectual property.
Thomas Mehler
German Competition Authority
Thomas Mehler works in the 4th Decision Division of the German Competition Authority. The 4th Decision Division is in charge of financial services and as such also of payment systems. Thomas entered the German Competition Authority in 1999. From 2007 to 2009 he was seconded to the European Commission (DG Competition). Thomas is lawyer and graduated at the university of Bonn and of Paris I (Panthéon Sorbonne).
Nikodem Szadkowski
Deputy Director, Market Analysis Department; Polish Competition Authority
Graduate of Poznan University of Economics, joined the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection in 2003. Head of Economic Analysis Unit since December 2005 and deputy director of the Market Analysis Department since December 2007. Deals mainly with economic aspects of competition proceedings and policy.
Thursday, 12 November 2015
Morning workshop
1 Settlement procedure
Igor Pospíšil
Lawyer; Czech Competition Authority
Igor Pospíšil completed his studies at the Faculty of Law of the Masaryk University in Brno in 2001. Since 2001 he has been working as a lawyer at the Office for the Protection of Competition. From 2005 to 2008 he held the position of a Head of the Working Group for Liberal Professions and in the period 2006-2007 he was a Director of Manufacturing and Retail Unit. Since the year 2007 he has been working as a Director of the Cartel Unit. From 2004 to 2007 he was also acting as lector of administrative law, registered by the Ministry of the Interior. He co-authored several documents issued by the Office for the Protection of Competition and acted as a speaker in different conferences and seminars in the area of competition law. He also gives lectures on the issues of competition law.
Pavel Dejl
Lawyer; Kocián, Šolc a Balaštík
Pavel Dejl is the professional on competition law in the Czech Republic and is considered to be an expert also by international rating legal publications (Chambers Global, Chambers Europe, Who’s Who Legal – The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers, Who’s Who Legal – The International Who’s Who of Competition Lawyers and Economists, PLC Which Lawyer). Besides studies at the Faculty of Law of the Charles University (1994 JUDr. – 2002, Ph.D. – 2002), he gained the LL.M. at the University of Amsterdam in 1996. Within the program Jean Monnet he gave lectures on European law and competition law at the Faculty of Law of University of West Bohemia in Plzeň. Pavel Dejl is fluent in English and Spanish and besides competition law he is focused in his practice also on litigation and arbitration issues.
Martin Nedelka
Lawyer; Nedelka Kubáč advokáti
Martin Nedelka is a lawyer and a partner in Prague and Bratislava office of a law firm Nedelka Kubáč advokáti which is specialized on the areas of Czech, Slovak and EU competition law, regulated industries, public procurement and compliance. Mr Nedelka studied law at universities in Prague, Regensburg and Dublin. He is a member of Czech Bar Association, Slovak Bar Association and Brussels Bar Association. He is also a member of the editorial board of the competition magazine Antitrust.
2 "Prioritization" and de minimis rule
Kamil Nejezchleb
Czech Competition Authority
Kamil Nejezchleb studied at the Faculty of Law of the Masaryk University in Brno and at the Faculty of Business and Management of the Brno University ofechnology. He joined the Office for the Protection of Competition in the year 2007 and currently he leads the Cartel Unit II. He gained experience with application of competition law also abroad in particular during the traineeship in the European Commission and from the regular cooperation within competition networks ECN and ICN. Kamil cooperated on drafting the methodology documents for leniency program and settlement procedures and also on last revisions of the Act on the Protection of Competition. He also acted as a lecturer within the seminars dedicated to contracting authorities focused on bid rigging detection. He published a number of articles in the area of competition law and he co-authored the publication Economic Methods in Competition Law. He also participated in several professional conferences and seminars.
Josef Bejček
Head of Commercial Law Department of the Faculty of Law; Masaryk University
In the years 1995–2001, Mr Bejcek was the Dean of the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University in Brno. Currently, he chairs the Commercial Law Department of the same faculty. He has been called upon as an expert witness in various important international arbitrations. He has been a member of the Appeal Commission of the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition since the very beginning of its existence, and he has also taken part in the work of many committee that contributed to the drafting of new legislation (the Civil Code, the Act on the Protection of Competition, and the Public Procurement Act). He works as an arbitrator of the Arbitration Court attached to the Czech Chamber of Commerce and the Czech Agrarian Chamber. Mr Bejček has been and is a member of several scientific councils; he worked in accreditation commissions of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and the Czech Government’s Council for Research and Development, and as a member of the Social and Economic Sciences council of the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He is a member of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA), the Czech Group of the International Association of Legal Science and the Czech Group of the International League of Competition Law; he is a member of the Czech Bar Association as well. He lectures around the world, including Vienna, Budapest, Munich, Berlin, Poznan, Regensburg, Salzburg, New York, Atlanta, Washington, Zurich, Bonn, Aix-en-Provence, etc. He has been working in some editorial boards of legal journals and he currently presides over the editorial board of the specialized journal for competition law „Antitrust“. Mr Bejček has authored and co-authored a number of articles, studies, and textbooks on competition law and commercial law.
Jiří Kindl
Lawyer; Weil, Gotshal & Manges
Jiří Kindl works for the law firm WEIL, GOTSHAL & MANGES s.r.o., where he has been specializing on the protection of competition. He graduated summa cum laude at the Faculty of Law of the Charles University in Prague. He also studied law at the University of Limerick in Ireland and the Magister Juris postgraduate course at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford (University College), where he received the distinction of the Clifford Chance Prize (Best Student of the Year in the Magister Juris program), Winter Williams Prize (Best Student in the subject of the European Business Regulation) and Monckton Chambers Prize (Best Student in the subject of Competition Law). He co-authored the publications Competition Law (Prague: C.H.Beck, 2006; 2012) and Act on the Protection of Competition, Commentary (Prague: C.H.Beck, 2007, 2010). He is also the author of a specialized monography Cartel and Distribution Agreements (Prague: C.H.Beck, 2009). His articles on the protection of competition are regularly published in the Czech Republic and abroad. He externally teaches the competition law at the Faculty of Law of the Charles University in Prague. He is regularly stated among the recommended lawyers in the area of competition in the Czech Republic in all relevant reference publications (Chambers Europe, PLC Which Lawyer? – Cross border competition, IFLR Guide – World's leading competition & antitrust lawyers, Best lawyers, etc.).
3 Significant market power
Hynek Brom
First Vice-chairman; Czech Competition Authority
Hynek Brom was born on 12 October 1975 in Pilsen. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, where he has been also teaching at the Department of Public Administration since 2000. From 2000 till 2002 Mr. Brom acted as a head of secretariat of the Governor of Pilsen region. In the years 2000-2009 he was deputy mayor and later mayor of the city circuit Pilsen 4. Since 2006 Mr. Brom was a member of several expert bodies of the Union of Towns and Municipalities of the Czech Republic, as well as expert institutions dealing with organization and execution of public administration. Hynek Brom joined the Office for the Protection of Competition in November 2009 as the Director of Section of State Aid and Administration and a month later he was appointed the First Vice-Chairman who is a head of the Section of Public Regulation and Administration of the Office.
PANEL IV: Restriction of competition by public administration
Šarūnas Keserauskas
Chairman; Lithuanian Competition Authority
Mr Šarūnas Keserauskas was appointed as a Chairman of a Competition Council of the Republic of Lithuania in April 2011. Before joining the Competition Council Mr Keserauskas worked for the Office of Fair Trading in the United Kingdom as Senior Legal Advisor advising case teams on antitrust matters. He gained a lot of experience in competition protection also in private sector as an adviser. He represented clients in antitrust investigations, merger filings and court litigation. He has been a competition law lecturer at the Vilnius University since the year 2005. Mr Keserauskas contributes to a lot of international conferences and discussions by giving a speech on broad range of competition issues. He gained the PhD in Law and LL.M in European Law at the King´s College London at the University of London. He studied LL.M in Law specialized in international law at the Vilnius University.
Johan Jonzon
Swedish Competition Authority
Johan Jonzon studied at the Faculty of Law of the Lund University. He also attended a Master Programme in International Human Rights Law at the Lund University. He joined the Swedish Competition Authority in 2014 as a legal case officer. Before joining the Swedish Competition Authority he gained extensive experience as a lawyer linguist in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and Law clerk in the District Court of Stockholm and District Court of Gothenburg where he was specialized on competition law, tax law migration law, public law and EU law.
Michael Mikulík
Vice-chairman; Czech Competition Authority
Michael Mikulík graduated from the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague (2002) and from Cambridge University (2008) where his postgraduate studies (LL.M.) focus was primarily on European competition law. He has been working for the Office for the Protection of Competition (Office) since 2010, initially as Adviser to the Chairman and then as Director of the Dominance and Vertical Agreements Department. From 2013 he was head of the Appeals Division and a member of appellate committees of the Office. In October 2015 he was appointed to the position of Vice Chairman of the Office in charge of protection of competition. Before joining the Office he worked in the field of advocacy.
Michael Mikulík specializes in the field of competition, administrative and public procurement law. He regularly represents the Office at meetings organized by adviser bodies of the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission, the Competition Commission of the OECD and other international platforms working on protection of competition and competition policy development. He also contributes as author and co-author in foreign professional publications dealing with competition law issues.
Michaela Nosa
Slovak Competition Authority
Michaela Nosa graduated from the Faculty of Law at Comenius University in Bratislava where she specialized on the issue of the protection of competition.
She has worked for the Slovak Competition Authority since the year 2004. Currently she is a member of the Legal and International Unit and she is in charge of representing the Authority in the court proceedings. She participates on the preparation of the second instance decisions in the course of the proceedings with the Board of the Slovak Competition Authority. She also represents the Authority at the meetings of the European Competition Network (ECN) and other international events. In the area of European legislation she attended the meetings of the Council of the EU on the European Commission´s draft of the Directive on certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions of the Member States and of the European Union (2014/104/EU of 26 November 2014). In the area of national legislation she was a head of the team responsible for the drafting of the last and so far the most extensive amendment to the Slovak Competition Act.
She is an author of several professional articles on competition law and she regularly contributes within international seminars and conferences.
PANEL V: Significant market power
Hynek Brom
First Vice-chairman; Czech Competition Authority
Hynek Brom was born on 12 October 1975 in Pilsen. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, where he has been also teaching at the Department of Public Administration since 2000. From 2000 till 2002 Mr. Brom acted as a head of secretariat of the Governor of Pilsen region. In the years 2000-2009 he was deputy mayor and later mayor of the city circuit Pilsen 4. Since 2006 Mr. Brom was a member of several expert bodies of the Union of Towns and Municipalities of the Czech Republic, as well as expert institutions dealing with organization and execution of public administration. Hynek Brom joined the Office for the Protection of Competition in November 2009 as the Director of Section of State Aid and Administration and a month later he was appointed the First Vice-Chairman who is a head of the Section of Public Regulation and Administration of the Office.
Barbora Dubanská
Senior Attorney; CMS Cameron McKinna v.o.s.
Barbora Dubanská is a head of unit for competition and EU regulation in the Prague office of the international law firm CMS that has established offices almost in all European countries and also in Asia and the Middle East. Barbora has extensive experience in provision of complex advisor services in the competition area including representing clients in the course of the proceedings with the Office for the Protection of Competition or European Commission.
In her practice Barbora has been focused in particular on adviser services for companies active in food and pharma sector. In the first half of 2015 Barbora completed a traineeship in the London office of CMS where she joined the unit devoted to competition law.
Besides the legal degree gained at the Charles University, Barbora also studied at the prestigious British university in Cambridge, the LL.M. program with the specialization on European law. During her carrier Barbora studied and worked abroad for several years (Heinrich Heine Universität in Düsseldorfu, Universidade de Lisboa, University of Queensland). She is fluent in English, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Jaroslav Froulík
Association of Traditional Czech Business
Miroslav Koberna
Federation of the Food and Drink Industries of the Czech Republic
Miroslav Koberna has been a Director for programming and strategy at the Federation of the Food and Drink Industries of the Czech Republic since the year 2000. Economic issues and international projects fall within his scope of competence. Before joining the Federation he worked in private sector as a business director and as an expert of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Miroslav Koberna is a Vice-chairman of a council of the Czech Technology Forum for Food, a council member of the Research Institute for Food Industry in Prague and a member of a council for science of the Research Institute for Dairy Products. He participated on several European and Czech projects, for example related to international comparison of retail chains from the perspective of competitiveness, projects focused on traditional food and drinks in the common European market, on improvement of competitiveness of agricultural sector and forestry, or on realization and operation of food information system FOODNET.
He regularly publishes professional articles and provides his expert opinion to media and lectures in professional seminars and conferences.
Miroslav Koberna studied at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague. He gained the CSc. at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of West Bohemia.
Marta Nováková
Czech Confederation of Commerce and Tourism
Marta Novakova is a Chair of the council of the company U&SLUNO active in the area of information technology and professional counceling focused on retail, logistics and distribution.
She started her professional career as a business manager of shopping centers PRIOR SM. Then she worked as a director and procurist of professional publisher SALVO.
She stuied System engineering at the Economic Faculty of the University Báňská. She a gained a lot of experience during her career in leading positions. She is an absolvent of MBA focused on Strategy for Management and of other professional courses.
Since May 2014 she has been a President of the Czech Confederation of Commerce and Tourism.
