Biography: Competition

Marcel Meinhardt is a partner with Lenz & Staehelin and heads the firm's competition and regulated markets group in Zurich. He was educated at the Universities of St Gallen (lic iur), Zurich (Dr iur), New York University (LLM) and the College of Europe (LLM).

Marcel Meinhardt specialises in all areas of Swiss and European competition law. He has a broad knowledge of multi-jurisdiction legal issues relevant in global antitrust matters. He typically represents parties in antitrust matters that have an international dimension. Marcel's experience covers a wide range of sectors, including financial, postal, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food, automotive, media, telecommunications and energy.

Marcel Meinhardt advises in contentious and non-contentious matters. He very frequently represents clients in connection with cartel investigations, amnesty and leniency applications, international investigations and litigation in these fields, including proceedings on interim measures. Most recently he acted in high-profile cases on alleged abuses of dominant positions, vertical restraints, horizontal agreements and information exchange.

Marcel Meinhardt also has great experience in merger control advice and litigation in this field. He has been responsible for a very large number of merger notifications to the Swiss Competition Commission and coordinated many multijurisdictional filings (recently an international joint venture of Swiss Post).

He also advises on regulatory issues in the electricity and gas industry.

Marcel Meinhardt is a member of various national and international competition law associations and a regular speaker at competition law conferences. He has published on Swiss competition law and in his doctoral thesis covered the essential facilities doctrine under US, EU and Swiss competition law. He has been a non-governmental adviser in connection with the cartels working group of the International Competition Network. He is a board member of the Swiss Association for Competition Law and speaks German, English and French.

Lenz & Staehelin is the largest law firm in Switzerland with over 160 attorneys in its three offices in Geneva, Zurich and Lausanne. The firm offers a comprehensive legal service to clients with international business interests, with a focus on banking and finance, mergers and acquisitions, and arbitration and litigation. Its clients include domestic and international companies and private individuals in Switzerland and abroad. As an independent Swiss law firm, Lenz & Staehelin has developed successful and long-standing relationships with leading foreign law firms.