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Media Releases
2006

24 July
2006

Competition update - EU appoints new Chief Economist

Professor Damien Neven is to replace Professor Lars-Hendrik Roeller, whose term as Chief Competition Economist to the European Commission expires later this month.

Professor Neven is a graduate of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, where he received a first degree in Geography followed by a Masters in Economics. He then went to Oxford, where he was awarded a Ph.D in Economics from Nuffield College, Oxford (the same College from which current head of the OFT, John Fingleton, received his doctorate in economics).

Professor Neven is currently Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and has previously held academic posts with the Universities of Lausanne and Liege. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee to the Commission's DG Competition and has served on EU advisory panels for DG Economics and Finance and for the Enterprise Directorate.

Neven has first hand experience of the pressures and constraints on companies in antitrust cases, having advised a number of companies in merger and non-merger cases. He advised Airtours and Tetra Laval in their successful appeals against Commission prohibitions of their respective mergers, and Ahlstom on its most recent bail out by the French Government.

John Schmidt, Partner in Shepherd and Wedderburn's competition group comments: "Neven is a real all-rounder in the field of antitrust, covering everything from merger control to state aid. He was the favourite three years ago, but it was thought that his nationality held him back. There is a real sense of irony in the fact that Damien advised Tetra and Airtours in their two successful appeals against merger prohibitions, as these were part of a string of EU court defeats which led to the creation of the post of Chief Economist."

Lars-Hendrik Roeller, the current Chief Economist, is set to return to Germany to become President of the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin.

Schmidt comments on Roeller's legacy at the European Commission: "There is no doubt that Lars-Hendrik had a huge impact in improving the economic basis and robustness of European Commission decisions. More fundamentally, a large body of revised guidelines bear his hallmark and they will influence future decisions. By contrast, the German Cartel Office still lags significantly behind the Commission in the importance it places on rigorous economics in its decisions. It may be hoped that Roeller will be a positive influence in Germany."


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