Profile: Mark D Powell

Competition

Biography: Competition

Mark Powell advises on all aspects of EC and UK competition law, with a particular focus on the interface between competition law and sector-specific regulatory requirements in areas such as telecommunications, energy, transport and pharmaceuticals.

Mr Powell also handles the regulatory clearance of complex mergers and acquisitions and represents and advises clients involved in cartel investigations.

Recent matters in which Mr Powell has been involved include: the intellectual property aspects of Microsoft's defence against commission accusations of its abuse of dominance; assisting Rambus, a developer of innovative DRAM architecture, to respond to commission allegations of abuse of a dominant position; giving regular advice to innovative pharmaceutical companies on the competition law aspects of co-promotion, co-marketing and other types of licensing and distribution agreements; representing clients involved in cartel investigations in sectors including district heating pipes, nucleotides, plumbing supplies, synthetic rubber and paraffin wax; clearance of mergers including the merger between Generali and PPF in the CEEC insurance sector, acquisition of the third mobile operator on the Greek market and an acquisition of hypermarkets in Hungary; a challenge to the European Commission decision to open a state aid investigation into long-term supply agreements in the Hungarian and Polish electricity markets; and ongoing advice to a rolling stock company in connection with the UK Competition Commission's inquiry into the sector.

Clients described Mr Powell to Chambers as "practical and savvy", an "enjoyable, hard-working and client-friendly" competition specialist who "takes a case and makes it his own. He doesn't just do the basic plumbing work but the complicated, architectural design too".