Taming the "Fourth Power"

Taming the "Fourth Power": Competition law and policy in the era of digital platforms and intermediaries

Special focus on the news industry, media pluralism and democracy in the age of digital platforms and intermediaries

Organised by the UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society

About the conference

The emergence of digital platforms and “next-generation” competition taking place between and within ecosystems raises interesting questions on the way we think about the role of competition law, and the way this may interact with other regulatory alternatives. One of the areas affected by the emergence of digital platforms and intermediaries is the news/media industry. More specifically, the largest digital platforms relying on an advertising revenue model have been swooping in newspapers' distribution and advertising revenues. Newspapers’ revenues are declining and many traditional news outlets face the risk of closing down. News publishers argue that as their share of the advertising revenue drops, they have less resources for investing in local and long-form creative and investigatory journalism, which affects their unique contribution to democratic life. This may not only affect media plurality, but also the democratic process, of which independent media form intrinsically part. Some digital platforms have put in place funds in order to subsidize content creation by independent media and investigative journalism. Furthermore, traditional media have been campaigning in order to benefit from an antitrust exemption enabling them to collectively negotiate with the digital platforms and other digital intermediaries. Similar suggestions have been made with regard to the users of digital platforms, in particular if they contribute to the value generated by them with content and/or personal data. Digital platforms and intermediaries also have a critical bearing on news and information flows and may derive significant value from news content, not only directly, but also indirectly as trend-setters and public debate-framers. Instead of people finding news, news find people through elaborate algorithms that are powered by social media news feeds, search results or recommendations. Certainly, the Internet has increased the possibilities of people to contribute to the public debate by creating content and diffusing it on the cyberspace. However, the emergence of digital platforms as important gatekeepers to the Internet has increased the risk of media manipulation and diffusion of “fake news”, because of the challenge they face to suitably monitor the news content seen on their platform.

The conference will first explore this ‘next-generation competition’, or the way the competitive game was transformed in the digital era by the emergence of digital platforms and intermediaries. We will then explore their economic and social impact, in particular by focusing on advertising markets and news/media, which is also an industry exercising a considerable influence to the democratic process. We will then delve into the competition law/regulatory dimension with a discussion over the remedies that may adopted in order to address the economic issues identified and more generally the question of putting in place the right institutional architecture for the platform economy. The last panel will specifically address the way competition law and regulation may be employed in order to address non-economic concerns, in particular the effect of digital platforms and intermediaries on medial pluralism and the democratic process.

Confirmed Speaker include:

• Antonio Bavasso, Allen & Overy LLP / UCL
• Oliver Bethell, Google
• Tembinkosi Bonakele, Commissioner, Competition Commission of South Africa
• Cristina Caffarra, CRA & UCL
• Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge, formerly vice-chair of the BBC Trust, member, expert panel on digital markets, UK Treasury
• Martin d'Halluin, VP Associate General Counsel, Antitrust, NewsCorp
• Ariel Ezrachi, University of Oxford
• Jason Furman, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Chair, expert panel on digital markets, UK Treasury
• Michal Gal, University of Haifa
• Andy Gavil, Howard University School of Law
• Annabelle Gawer, Head, Department of Digital Economy, University of Surrey; member, EU Observatory on the Online Platform Economy
• Damien Geradin, EUCLID Law, Tilburg & UCL
• Inge Graef, University of Tilburg
• Justus Haucap, Director, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics; member Panel on Digital markets, German Ministry of Economics and Energy
• Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Pennsylvania Law School
• Michael Jacobides, London Business School
• Frederic Jenny, President Competition Committee, OECD
• Ioannis Kokkoris, Queen Mary University of London
• Ioannis Lianos, Director, UCL CLES; Chair of Global Competition Law and Policy, UCL
• Barry Lynn, Executive Director of the Open Markets Institute
• Philip Marsden, Senior Director for Case Decision Groups, UK CMA; College of Europe, Bruges, member, expert panel on digital markets, UK Treasury
• Gabriella Muscolo, Italian Competition Authority
• Pier Luigi Parcu, Director of the Florence Competition Programme, EUI
• Matt Rogerson, Director of Public Policy, The Guardian
• Seth Sacher, Federal Trade Commission
• Jacques Steenbergen, Head, Belgian Competition Authority
• Maurice Stucke, University of Tenessee
• Tommaso Valletti, Chief Economist, European Commission
• Nicolo Zingales, University of Sussex

This conference is supported by

 Programme

08:30	Registration and refreshments
09:10	Welcome Ioannis Lianos, Director, UCL CLES; Chair of Global Competition Law and Policy, UCL
09:15	Panel 1: Competition in the Age of Digital Platforms: Should competition law change its game? Chair: Ioannis Lianos, Director, UCL CLES; Chair of Global Competition Law and Policy, UCL Keynote speech: Jason Furman, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Chair, expert panel on digital markets, UK Treasury Panellists Oliver Bethell, Google Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge, formerly vice-chair of the BBC Trust, member, expert panel on digital markets, UK Treasury Anabelle Gawer, Head, Department of Digital Economy, University of Surrey; member, EU Observatory on the Online Platform Economy Damien Geradin, EUCLID Law, Tilburg & UCL Justus Haucap, Director, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics; member Panel on Digital markets, German Ministry of Economics and Energy
11:00	Refreshments break
11:20	Panel 2: Media, Markets, Democracy and Competition Law: re-conceiving the interaction in the era of digital capitalism? Chair: Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Pennsylvania Law School Panellists Tembinkosi Bonakele, Commissioner, Competition Commission of South Africa Ariel Ezrachi, University of Oxford Michal Gal, University of Haifa Barry Lynn, Executive Director of the Open Markets Institute Philip Marsden, Senior Director for Case Decision Groups, UK CMA; College of Europe, Bruges, member, expert panel on digital markets, UK Treasury Matt Rogerson, Director of Public Policy, The Guardian
13:00	Lunch
14:00	Panel 3: Competition Law, Regulation, Commons, or something else? How can we deal with the power of digital platforms? Chair: Frederic Jenny, President Competition Committee, OECD Panellists Antonio Bavasso, Allen & Overy LLP & UCL Cristina Caffarra, CRA & UCL Andy Gavil, Howard University School of Law Michael Jacobides, London Business School Maurice Stucke, University of Tenessee Tommaso Valletti, Chief Economist, European Commission
15:45	Refreshments break
16:05	Panel 4: Establishing countervailing powers to digital platforms An exemption for collective bargaining in favour of news media organizations and creators of content, other options? Chair (and speaker): Frederic Jenny, President, Competition Committee, OECD Panellists Martin d'Halluin, VP Associate General Counsel, Antitrust, NewsCorp Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Pennsylvania Law School Inge Graef, University of Tilburg Gabriella Muscolo, Italian Competition Authority Nicolo Zingales, University of Sussex
17:15	Panel 5: Moving beyond purely-economic concerns and new theories of competition law harm: fake news, privacy and democracy Chair: Andy Gavil, Howard University School of Law Panellists Ioannis Kokkoris, Queen Mary University of London Pier Luigi Parcu, Director of the Florence Competition Programme, EUI Seth Sacher, Federal Trade Commission Jacques Steenbergen, Head, Belgian Competition Authority
18:30	End of Conference Drinks Reception
19:30	Event ends

 

 

About the Speakers

• Antonio Bavasso, Allen & Overy LLP / UCL

  Antonio Bavasso is a partner at Allen & Overy, co-head of the Global Antitrust practice and advises on all aspects of antitrust law, practising primarily in London and Brussels. Over the years he has advised on a number of precedent-setting merger and behavioural investigations as well as regulatory and antitrust litigation. These include: News Corp on the creation of Sky Italia; Sky (then BskyB) on the acquisition of a stake in ITV (and following litigation up to the Court of Appeal); 20th Century Fox on various matters including the UK investigation on supply of movies to pay TV and current EC investigation into pay-TV territorial licensing; WPP in relation to various matters including the acquisition of Grey and TNS; Mubadala as part of the Sony Consortium for the acquisition of EMI Music Publishing; Paddy Power’s merger with Betfair; Orange Austria on the merger with Hutchison; 21st Century Fox on BSkyB’s acquisition of Sky Italia and Sky-D and on the joint venture between Endemol and Shine; Veon (then VimpelCom) on the merger between Italian mobile operators Wind and H3G and Veon’s subsequent sale of its interest in WindTre to its JV partner CK Hutchison. Antonio also advised 21st Century Fox on the proposed acquisition of Sky. His current cases include advising 21st Century Fox on its proposed acquisition by The Walt Disney Company, and acting for Qatar Petroleum on the EC investigation into gas exports.

  He is a regular speaker at international conferences and has published extensively. Antonio holds a JD cum laude from the University of Florence and a PhD from University College London. He is a visiting professor at UCL where he is the co-founder and co-director of the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics.  He has published widely in this area and is a co-editor of Competition Policy International and consultant editor of Butterworths Competition Law Handbook. He is a non-governmental adviser to the International Competition Network of competition authorities on unilateral practices and merger control.

• Oliver Bethell, Google
  Oliver currently leads Google's EMEA competition team.  He joined Google in 2008, working first in London before a 4 year tour in the US.  He returned to London in 2017.  Oliver was the Competition Individual of the Year, 2018 (Global Counsel Awards and European Counsel Awards).
   
• Tembinkosi Bonakele, Commissioner, Competition Commission of South Africa

  Tembinkosi Bonakele has been with the Commission for the past ten years. He briefly left the Commission in March 2013 and came back in October 2013 as Acting Commissioner. He has been in this position until his appointment as the Commissioner. Mr Bonakele has occupied various positions in the Commission’s core divisions. He was appointed Deputy Commissioner in 2008, and prior to that worked as head of mergers, head of compliance and senior legal counsel respectively. He established the Commission’s cartels division and has worked on all of the Commission’s major cases over the past ten years, including the bread & flour and construction bid-rigging cartel cases, Telkom and SAB abuse of dominance cases and a number of high-profile mergers. He has been involved in negotiating most of the Commission’s ground-breaking settlements and helped develop the Commission’s Corporate Leniency Policy as well as the Construction Fast Track Settlement Policy. Mr Bonakele is an admitted attorney and previously practised with Cheadle Thompson and Haysom in Johannesburg largely in the areas of labour law, regulation and health and safety. He has also spent a year working in corporate finance & antitrust groups at Clifford Chance, New York office. He occasionally teaches competition law at the University of Fort Hare, Wits University and is a fellow of the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Competition, Regulation and Economic Development. He publishes academic journals and writes for newspapers and business magazines on competition matters.

  He holds a BJuris and an LLB from the University of Fort Hare and an MBA from Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), University of Pretoria. Mr Bonakele currently serve as the Chairperson of the African Competition Forum and is a member of the International Competition Network Steering Group.

• Cristina Caffarra, CRA & UCL
  Dr Cristina Caffarra heads up the Competition Team of Charles River Associates (a team of consulting economists) in Europe.   Dr Caffarra holds a PhD in Economics from Oxford University and is an expert in the application of applied theory and industrial economics to competition law, as well as the empirical analysis of markets in the context of competition investigations. She has provided economic advice to companies on landmark cases in merger control, assessment of vertical restraints, finding of dominance, evaluation of abusive conduct, and several other competition/ antitrust issues including bundling, tying, rebates, price discrimination, other forms of potentially exclusionary conduct, intellectual property rights, information exchanges, collusion and the assessment of damages.  She has directed and coordinated empirical and theoretical economic analyses on several of the high profile cases of the last 20 years before the European Commission (including matters involving Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung, Hollywood Studios, Sky and others), the competition authorities of several member states as well and the Courts in several jurisdictions.  She has provided expert economic advice and testimony before the General Court in Luxembourg, the Competition Appeal Tribunal in the UK, the High Court in Dublin, the Competition Appeals Tribunal in South Africa, and various courts in several litigated competition matters.   Dr Caffarra has worked for research institutions both in Italy and at Oxford. She is on the Editorial Board of the European Competition Law Journal, as well as on the Advisory Board of the Journal of European Competition Law & Practice (OUP). She lectures in competition economics and has published articles for competition journals as well as presented papers on the economics of competition law at numerous international and academic conferences.
   
• Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge, formerly vice-chair of the BBC Trust, member, expert panel on digital markets, UK Treasury
  Diane is the Inaugural Bennett Professor of Public Policy at University Cambridge and

  co-directs the Institute with Professor Kenny. She is heading research in the fields of public policy economics, technology, industrial strategy and global inequality. She was previously Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester and has held a number of public service roles including Vice Chair of the BBC Trust (2006-2014), member of the Competition Commission (2001-2009), and member of the Migration Advisory Committee (2009-2014). She is currently a member of the Natural Capital Committee, an expert adviser to the National Infrastructure Commission and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. She was awarded a CBE for her contribution to the public understanding of economics in the 2018 New Year Honours.

• Martin d'Halluin, VP Associate General Counsel, Antitrust, NewsCorp
  Martin d’Halluin is Vice President, Associate General Counsel, Antitrust at News Corp, a global diversified media and information services company—comprised of businesses that include, among others, news and information services (including The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London and The Australian), book publishing, and digital real estate services. Prior to his current position, he was Antitrust Partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP in New York.  He has taught corporate law at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. He received a master’s degree in business from HEC Paris and master’s degrees in law from Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne and Harvard Law School; he is admitted to the bars of Paris and New York.
   
• Ariel Ezrachi, University of Oxford
  Ariel Ezrachi is the Slaughter and May Professor of Competition Law at the University of Oxford and the Director of the University of Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy. He is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement (OUP) and the author, co-author and editor of numerous books, including Virtual Competition – The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy (2016, Harvard) and EU Competition Law, An Analytical Guide to the Leading Cases (6th ed, 2018, Hart). Professor Ezrachi’s research and commentary have been featured in The Economist, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Guardian, Nikkei, New Scientist, Politico, WIRED, BBC, and other international outlets.
   
• Jason Furman, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Chair, expert panel on digital markets, UK Treasury
  Jason Furman is Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). He is also non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. This followed eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including serving as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, acting as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. During this time Furman played a major role in most of the major economic policies of the Obama Administration. Previously Furman held a variety of posts in public policy and research. In public policy, Furman worked at both the Council of Economic Advisers and National Economic Council during the Clinton administration and also at the World Bank. In research, Furman was a Director of the Hamilton Project and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and also has served in visiting positions at various universities, including NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Policy. Furman has conducted research in a wide range of areas, including fiscal policy, tax policy, health economics, Social Security, technology policy, and domestic and international macroeconomics. In addition to articles in scholarly journals and periodicals, Furman is the editor of two books on economic policy. Furman holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
   
• Michal Gal, University of Haifa
  Michal Gal (LL.B., LL.M., S.J.D.) is Professor and Director of the Forum on Law and Markets at the Faculty of Law, University of Haifa, Israel. She was a Visiting Professor at NYU, Columbia, Georgetown, Melbourne, Bocconi and Lisbon. Prof. Gal is the author of  several books, including  Competition Policy for Small Market Economies  (Harvard University Press, 2003). She also published numerous scholarly articles on in leading journals, including on the intersection of competition law and intellectual property, on law and technology, on the effects of the size of the market on regulation, and on the regulation of the electricity industry. She has won prizes for her research and for her teaching. Inter alia, she was chosen as one of the ten most promising young legal scholars in Israel (Globes, 2007) and as one of the leading women in competition law around the world (Global Competition Review). Her paper, "Merger Policy for Small and Micro Economies", won the Antitrust Writings Award for best paper on merger policy (2013), and her paper on “Access to Big Data” (with Daniel Rubinfeld) won  the award for best paper on unilateral conduct (2016). Her Paper "Patent Challenge Clauses: A New Antitrust Offense?" (with Alan Miller) won the Jerry  S. Cohen Medal, given by the American Antitrust Institute, for best antitrust paper published in 2017.
   
  Prof. Gal is the President of the International Academic Society for Competition Law Scholars (ASCOLA). She served as a consultant to several international organizations (including OECD, UNCTAD) on issues of competition law and was a non-governmental advisor of the International Competition Network (ICN). She also advised several small economies and regional organizations on the framing of their competition laws. She is a board member of several international antitrust organizations, including the American Antitrust Institute (AAI), The Antitrust Consumer Institute, the Asian Competition Law and Economics Center (ACLEC). She clerked at the Israeli Supreme Court, and her work is often cited in the decisions of the Court on competition matters.
   
• Andy Gavil, Howard University School of Law

  Professor Andy Gavil teaches antitrust law, civil procedure, complex litigation, and information privacy and data security at the Howard University School of Law, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1989.  He is also Senior Of Counsel in the Antitrust Practice Group at Crowell & Moring LLP.   Andy has written and lectured extensively on various aspects of antitrust law, policy, and litigation and is an author of ANTITRUST LAW IN PERSPECTIVE: CASES CONCEPTS AND PROBLEMS IN COMPETITION POLICY (3d ed. 2017) (with Professors William E. Kovacic, Jonathan B. Baker, and Joshua D. Wright), and THE MICROSOFT ANTITRUST CASES: COMPETITION POLICY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (MIT PRESS 2014) (with Professor Harry First).  From September 2012 to December 2014 he served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.  He has been an active member of the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association and currently serves as the Chair of the Editorial Board of the Antitrust Law Journal and Chair of the Selection Committee for the Section’s International Scholar-in-Residence Program.

• Annabelle Gawer, Head, Department of Digital Economy, University of Surrey; member, EU Observatory on the Online Platform Economy

  An award-winning author and an engaged scholar,  Professor Annabelle Gawer is a thought-leader, educator, and expert advisor on the business of digital platforms (such as Google and Facebook), and on the dynamics of platform-based innovation ecosystems. A  pioneer of international stature in the field of digital platforms, Professor Annabelle Gawer is a leading voice in advancing research (Google Scholar indicates over 6600 citations as of December 2018), as well as managerial practice and European policy. Prof Annabelle Gawer is a world-class scholar and advisor on digital platforms and innovation ecosystems. Her seminal research offers insights on the strategic management of digital platforms and the governance of their innovation ecosystems by exploring systematically the interaction between economic forces, organizational dynamics, and technological design. She is a highly-cited author of 4 books Platform Leadership, Platform, Markets and Innovation, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Platforms, and the forthcoming The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power, and authored of co-authored over 20 articles in top international journals. Her seminal research on platform leadership and innovation ecosystems explains how innovation and competition interact to shape platform-based markets and the digital economy. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The London Times, The Financial Times, The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. Prof Gawer advises the European Commission, as an expert in the newly formed European Commission’s Observatory of the Online Platform Economy Expert Group. She also advises the UK Parliament House of Lords, the UK Government, and the OECD on regulation of online platforms. Prof Gawer’s books and articles have been translated in Chinese and Japanese.

• Damien Geradin, EUCLID Law, Tilburg & UCL

  Damien Geradin is a partner at EUCLID Law, a competition law boutique firm based in Brussels and London. Before joining EUCLID, Damien was a partner in the Brussels office of Covington & Burling LLP. Damien has assisted clients in many high-stake European Commission investigations, including some of the most complex abuse of dominance cases with a focus on the tech sector. Damien has frequently also represented clients before the General Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union. He also intervenes as an expert witness in national court proceedings and international arbitrations as an expert witness. According to Chambers Global, Mr. Geradin “is well known for his writing”, with commentators describing him as “one of the best antitrust theoreticians around”. Damien was also recognised by Who’s Who Legal 2018 as a Competition expert. Damien is also a Professor of competition law and economics at Tilburg University and a visiting Professor at University College London. Over the years, he has held visiting Professorships at leading US law schools including Columbia, Harvard, Michigan and Yale. He was also a visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges, for 15 years. He is the co-author of Global Antitrust Law and Economics (2nd 2011) and EU Competition Law and Economics (2013). He is also the author of over 120 law review articles and other publications, which have been cited by the US Supreme Court, US Court of Appeals, the EU courts and countless national courts and regulatory agencies. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Competition Law & Economics published by Oxford University Press. He is a non-governmental advisor of the ICN and a Member of the European Commission’s Expert of licensing and valuation of SEPs. Damien is a graduate from King’s College London and Cambridge University, and was Fulbright Scholar at Yale Law School.

• Inge Graef, University of Tilburg
  Inge Graef is Assistant Professor at Tilburg Law School with affiliations to the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT) and the Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC). She is also appointed as a member of the European Commission's expert group to the EU Observatory on the Online Platform Economy. The focus of Inge's research is on competition enforcement in the digital economy. She is particularly interested in the interface between competition law and other fields of EU law such as data protection, intellectual property and electronic communications law. Other research interests include the Digital Single Market and net neutrality.
  Inge holds a PhD in law from KU Leuven. In her doctoral thesis, she explored the interaction between competition law and data on online platforms, and the extent to which data protection can be protected as a non-efficiency concern in competition policy.
   
• Justus Haucap, Director, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics; member Panel on Digital markets, German Ministry of Economics and Energy
   
• Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Pennsylvania Law School
  Herbert Hovenkamp is the James G. Dinan University Professor, Penn Law and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches antitrust law, American legal and Constitutional history, torts, and innovation and competition policy. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2008 won the Justice Department’s John Sherman Award for his lifetime contributions to antitrust law.  Prior to 2017 he was a professor at the University of Iowa.  His legal history writing includes The Opening of American Law: Neoclassical Legal Thought, 1870-1970 (Oxford, 2015); Enterprise and American Law, 1836-1937 (Harvard, 1991).  His principal antitrust scholarship includes Antitrust Law: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles and their Application (formerly with the late Phillip E. Areeda and the late Donald F. Turner, 1978-2018); Federal Antitrust Policy (4th ed. 2016); Principles of Antitrust (2017) and many casebooks and articles.
   
• Michael Jacobides, London Business School

  Michael holds the Sir Donald Gordon Chair of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the London Business School, where he is Associate Professor of Strategy. He has held visiting appointments at Wharton, Harvard Business School, NYU- Stern, has visited Bocconi, U. of Paris and Singapore Management University, and teaches in Columbia for the LBS/Columbia EMBA-Global. He has served on the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum on the Financial System and the Future of Investments, and is a Visiting Scholar with the New York Fed, focusing on changing business models in Financial Services. He studied in Athens, Cambridge, Stanford and Wharton, where he obtained his PhD.

  Michael’s focus is change, design and strategy: he studies industry evolution, value migration, new business models, and structural change in firms and sectors. He is also interested in organisational design and how firms cope with organisational pathologies. His research has earned him the Sloan Foundation Award for the best Industry Study, and he has raised over £1M in research funds. A Ghoshal Fellow in the Advanced Institute of Management, his research has been sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust, NATO, MBAA, the WEF and other private and public bodies. He has worked with Santander, Credit Suisse, BBVA, Goldman Sachs, Lloyds, RBS, Zurich, if, Airbus, Finmeccanica, Pirelli, Lufthansa, Vodafone, Telenor, DT, Nokia, McKinsey, PwC, KPMG, MerckSerono, Chiesi Pharmaceutica, Roche and the NHS on executive development, thought leadership and strategy.

• Frederic Jenny, President Competition Committee, OECD
   
• Ioannis Kokkoris, Queen Mary University of London

  Professor Ioannis Kokkoris holds a Chair in Law and Economics at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, UK. He is also the Vice Chairman of the Institute of Studies in Competition Law and Policy.

  He is an expert on competition law as well as on law and economics. His main research interests are in the area of law and economics, comparative competition law/economics and policy focusing on EU, China and ASEAN. Professor Kokkoris has formerly served as Principal Case Officer/Economic Advisor in the Mergers branch at the Office of Fair Trading, UK where he dealt with leading cases such as NASDAQ/LSE, NYSE/Euronext, Global/GCap and was a member of the drafting team of the UK Merger Guidelines. He has also worked on abuse of dominance cases as well as cartels and other anticompetitive agreements cases. He has previously served as an Economist in the Merger Task Force at the DG Competition-European Commission.

  Professor Kokkoris has led and worked on funded projects by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, World Bank, the European Commission, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other international institutions. He is a special advisor to a number of competition authorities and frequently advises companies on competition enforcement issues in a number of jurisdictions and delivers training programmes for companies, competition authorities and courts.

  He has authored and co-authored more than 15 books, more than 60 articles and 20 chapters. He is on the editorial board of various international journals.

• Ioannis Lianos, Director, UCL CLES; Chair of Global Competition Law and Policy, UCL
   
• Barry Lynn, Executive Director of the Open Markets Institute

  Barry Lynn directs the Open Markets Institute. Previously, he spent 15 years at the New America Foundation researching and writing about monopoly power. He is author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (Wiley 2010) and End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation (Doubleday 2005).

  Lynn’s writings on the political and economic effects of the extreme consolidation of power in the United States have influenced the thinking of policymakers and antitrust professionals on both sides of the Atlantic. His work has been profiled on CBS and in the New York Times, and his articles have appeared in publications including Harper’s, the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Policy. He has appeared on CBS, PBS, CNN, the BBC, NPR, MSNBC, C-Span, and the Christian Broadcasting Network, among others. Prior to joining New America, Lynn was executive editor of Global Business Magazine for seven years, and worked as a correspondent in Peru, Venezuela, and the Caribbean for the Associated Press and Agence France Presse.

• Philip Marsden, Senior Director for Case Decision Groups, UK CMA; College of Europe, Bruges, member, expert panel on digital markets, UK Treasury

  Dr Philip Marsden is Deputy Chair of the Bank of England’s Enforcement Decision Making Committee, and a member of the Case Decisions Committee, the Enforcement Decisions Committee and the Regulatory Decisions Committee at the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payment Systems Regulator.  Philip is also Professor of Law and Economics at the College of Europe, Bruges, teaching the core LL.M. competition course and is co-founder and General Editor of the European Competition Journal, and the Oxford Competition Law case reporter series.  His research interests include innovation incentives, comparative competition law and online markets.   He has for many years been Counsel to the fifty-CEO Board of the Consumer Goods Forum, and advised governments on competition issues under the auspices of the ICN, OECD, UN, ADB, EBRD, World Bank and IMF. For ten years Philip held various roles at the UK competition authority, first as member of the Board of the Office of Fair Trading, then as Inquiry Chair and Senior Director, Case Decision Groups, at the Competition and Markets Authority, where he decided on Phase II mergers, market investigations and antitrust cases, post-SO.  He was also a Board member of the Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authorities.  He was also Senior Research Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and Director of its Competition Law Forum.   In private practice he worked at major law firms in Toronto, Tokyo and London.   A competition official and prosecutor early on in his career, for the last 30 years Philip has also acted as independent counsel, specialising in advice to firms in the fast-moving consumer goods and high technology sectors, and to governments on competition agency effectiveness and decision-making.   Philip earned his doctorate in law from the University of Oxford.   He is also a keen distance runner and rower.   His wife and children are all artists, but he still likes to think he can be creative too, if it leads to more efficient and effective decision-making and enforcement.

• Gabriella Muscolo, Italian Competition Authority

  Gabriella Muscolo is a Commissioner at the Italian Competition Authority since May 2014.
  Appointed as a Judge in 1985, she sat at the Specialist Section for Intellectual Property and Competition Law in the District Court of Rome and at the Court for Undertakings in Rome. From 2009 to 2014, she was appointed member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal-EBA of the European Patent Office-EPO. Since 2008, Gabriella Muscolo has been lecturer of Company Law at the School of Specialization for Legal Professionals at the University of Rome – La Sapienza. She also lectured at Italian and foreign Universities such as Université de Strasbourg, CEIPI-Centre d’Étude International de la Propriété Intellectuelle, Technische Universitat Dresden, Universidad de Alicante, Queen Mary University, University of Washington, CASRIP- Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Seattle and Waseda University in Tokio. She publishes in Italian as well as in English in the fields of Intellectual Property and Competition Law. She co-edited the volumes “Intellectual Property and Competition Law: a European perspective” and “The Pharmaceutical Sector Between Patent Law And Competition Law. An International Perspective”.

• Pier Luigi Parcu, Director of the Florence Competition Programme, EUI
  Pier Luigi Parcu is part-time Professor at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, since 2010. He is currently Area Director of the Florence School of Regulation - Communications & Media, Director of the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom and Director of the Florence Competition Programme in Law and Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). His research in the area of industrial organization and law and economics focuses on the interaction between regulation and antitrust in shaping firms’ behaviour. As regards research in the media and Internet areas, Professor Parcu’s interests focus on the effects of ownership concentration and internal governance of the media enterprise on pluralism and freedom of expression and on the influence on offline business models of economic developments related to online platforms, smart cities and artificial intelligence.
   
• Matt Rogerson, Director of Public Policy, The Guardian
   
• Seth Sacher, Federal Trade Commission
  Seth B. Sacher is a senior economist at the Federal Trade Commission.  At the FTC, he has worked on numerous antitrust investigations, research projects and served as an expert witness.  In addition to his current position, he has been a Partner at Bates White LLC and a Principal at Charles River Associates.  His research interests include antitrust, applied microeconomics, health care and the media industry.   He has published a number of articles in economics and antitrust journals and made presentations at government hearings, international symposia, professional economic conferences, to the staff of law firms, and at the Federal Trade Commission. He has taught economics at the University of Maryland, George Washington University, Georgetown University, and Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Sacher received a Ph.D. and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the State University of New York at Binghamton.   
   
• Jacques Steenbergen, Head, Belgian Competition Authority
   
• Maurice Stucke, University of Tenessee

  Maurice E. Stucke is a co-founder of the law firm, the Konkurrenz Group, and a Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee.
  With twenty years experience handling a range of competition policy issues in both private practice and as a prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice, he advises governments, law firms, consumer groups, and multi-national firms on competition and privacy issues. He co-authored two books, Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy (Harvard University Press 2016) and Big Data and Competition Policy (Oxford University Press 2016). Professor Stucke received a number of awards, including a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. In 2012, he was a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne.  In 2015 and 2017, he visited University of Oxford, where he was an Academic Visitor at its Institute of European and Comparative Law, a Fellow at its Centre for Competition Law and Policy, and a Senior Associateship at Pembroke College. Professor Stucke serves as one of the United States’ non-governmental advisors to the International Competition Network, as a Senior Fellow at the American Antitrust Institute, and on the boards of the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies and the Academic Society for Competition Law.  He has been quoted, and his research has been featured, in numerous media outlets including the Associated Press, Atlantic, Australian, BBC, Bloomberg, Business Insider, CNN-Money, Economist, Fast Company, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Market Watch, New Republic, New York Times, New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, Radio 3 Hong Kong, Reuters, Science, Scotsman, Slate, Times Higher Education, USA Today, Wired, and Wall Street Journal.

• Tommaso Valletti, Chief Economist, European Commission
   
• Nicolo Zingales, University of Sussex
  Nicolo Zingales is Lecturer in Competition and Information Law at Sussex Law School, and the Deputy Director of the Sussex Centre for Information Governance Research. He is also Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and Research Associate at Tilburg's Centre for Law and Economics and Institute for Law, Technology and Society. His research focuses primarily on the role and responsibilities of digital intermediaries and on the intersection of competition law with other legal regimes, such as  IP, consumer and data protection law. He holds a PhD in International Law and Economics from Bocconi University and a JD (cum laude) from the University of Bologna.

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