Biography: Competition

John is a law graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and Cambridge University. He lectured in European Law at Queen's University, Belfast in the 1980s and practised at the Bar of Northern Ireland. In 1987, he joined the Brussels office of Clifford Chance where he practised in EU competition law and anti-dumping. In 1990, he was recruited by Arthur Cox in order to establish the firm's EU and competition law group.

John has been head of the group since 1990 and a partner since 1992. He is regarded as one of the leading practitioners in the area in Ireland. His practice focuses on competition law, state aid and merger control.

John has been involved in most of the leading competition law and merger control cases in Ireland over the last 20 years, before both the Irish Competition Authority and the European Commission and in the Irish courts and the courts of the European Union. Since 2008, he has also advised the Irish government on the competition law and state aid aspects of various state measures taken in light of the difficulties in the Irish banking sector.

John has represented the firm's clients over a wide range of sectors. In addition, he attracts instructions from companies who are not otherwise clients of the firm. He has a reputation for taking a pragmatic and commercial approach to cases which often raise complex legal and economic issues.

John has written numerous articles on competition law, state aid and merger control and lectures regularly on the subjects.