Profile: Nicholas Spearing

Competition

Biography: Competition

Nicholas Spearing has been a partner in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's antitrust, competition and trade (ACT) practice group since 1984. A competition law specialist, he has acted for leading companies in a range of monopolies and restrictive practices cases in the UK (Office of Fair Trading and Competition Commission) and at European Commission level. He has gained merger clearances at both national and EU levels for clients including E.ON, RBS, Kingfisher, PepsiCo, ICI, Woolworths and Rank.

His recent work has included securing Competition Commission clearances for Woolworths' acquisition of Bertrams and for the merger of Littlewoods and Vernons Pools. He successfully represented Walkers Snack Foods in the OFT investigation into alleged abuse of dominance.

Co-author of the mergers section in Butterworth's Competition Law, Nicholas is a former chairman of the UK Law Solicitors European group. Nicholas was born in 1954 and educated at Hertford College, Oxford.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is a leading international law firm with a network of 26 offices across Europe, the US, Asia and the Middle East providing a full range of legal services worldwide. Members of the firm's 250-strong ACT group are based in Amsterdam, Beijing, Berlin, Bratislava, Brussels, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris, Rome, Shanghai, Tokyo, Vienna and Washington, DC.