Profile: Robert Saint-Esteben

Competition

Biography: Competition

Robert Saint-Esteben is a partner at Bredin Prat and the founder and head of the firm's competition practice. Consistently ranked first among competition lawyers in international guides, Mr Saint-Esteben has established a reputation as one of France's leading experts on French and European competition law.

In addition, he has substantial experience in commercial litigation and arbitration. Mr Saint-Esteben has published numerous books and articles in the field of competition law including Droits Communautaires et Droits Nationaux (1967), Une Concentration Internationale d'Entreprises, L'Affaire Continental Can, (1972), Chronique de droit communautaire: Développements du droit communautaire de la concurrence (DPCI 667, 1988), and "Les Concentrations" in Jurisclasseur Europe, I, 1991. Mr Saint-Esteben holds degrees from the University of Paris; the University of Paris Law School (licence, 1964); Diplôme d'Etudes Supérieures de Droit Privé, 1965; Diplôme d'Etudes Supérieures de Sciences Criminelles, 1967; the Ecole Nationale des Impôts, 1964; and Diplôme du Centre Universitaire d'Etudes des Communautés Européennes (Université de Paris-Panthéon Sorbonne), 1966. Mr Saint-Esteben was admitted to the Paris bar in 1975 and became a partner at Bredin Prat in 1978.

Founded in 1966, Bredin Prat's practice originally focused on corporate, commercial, civil and criminal litigation before the French courts and French and international arbitration. Over the last decade, while continuing the firm's historic litigation-based practice, Bredin Prat has expanded its practice areas into mergers and acquisitions, securities law, banking and finance, tax law, and EC and French competition law. This expansion has coincided with an international broadening of the firm's client base to include, in particular, American, British and other European-based industrial communication and financial service companies. As part of this expansion, a group of Anglo-American Paris-based attorneys and members of the New York bar were formally merged into the firm in 1992. The firm's European law activities have been strengthened by the opening in January 1999 of an office in Brussels, currently headed by partner Marc Pittie.