As part of an ongoing restructure, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has made three key appointments to its legal team with hires from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Hogan Lovells.
Freshfields senior associate Colin Raftery joins the CMA on 21 November as a director of mergers. Currently sitting in the firm’s antitrust, competition and trade group, Raftery advises on all aspects of EU and UK competition law. He joins current directors of mergers Stephanie Canet and Andrew Wright.
Former senior associate at Freshfields Martim de Lancastre Valente joins the CMA as a legal director alongside former senior associate at Hogan Lovells Tim Capel. The pair will join the CMA this month.
Earlier this year Latham & Watkins hired the CMA’s director of mergers Jonathan Parker after two years at the watchdog. Clifford Chance also took its pick from the CMA in April, hiring director of mergers Nelson Jung as a City partner. The competition watchdog has been plagued by high staff turnover since it launched, and the granting of competition powers to the Financial Conduct Authority last year has not helped matters, with the City regulator bringing in a string of big names from the lower paying CMA.
Having long been viewed as stable, the UK’s competition law agenda has been shaken up significantly over the last 12 months, with the CMA’s public attack on the proposed merger of mobile networks O2 and Three in May a recent example.
madeleine.farman@legalease.co.uk
Read more in the feature: ‘Less bark, more bite – competition to the fore as tougher enforcement arrives’
