Biography: Competition

Nicholas Spearing is a partner in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's antitrust, competition and trade (ACT) group, based in the London office. He has been a partner since 1984. He has acted for leading companies in a range of transactional and behavioural practices cases in the UK (Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and Competition Commission) and at European Commission level. He has gained merger clearances at both national and EU levels for clients including EON, RBS, Xstrata, PepsiCo, Wolseley and Live Nation.

His recent work has included securing unconditional Competition Commission clearances for the mergers of Littlewoods and Vernons Pools, as well as Live Nation/Ticketmaster. He successfully represented Walkers Snack Foods in the OFT investigation into alleged abuse of dominance, and advised the Bank of England on consolidation in the banking sector, as well as other issues arising out of the financial crisis.

The original author of the mergers section in Butterworth's Competition Law, Nicholas is a former chairman of the Solicitors' European Group.

Nicholas was educated at Hertford College, Oxford.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's antitrust, competition and trade (ACT) practice comprises over 50 partners and 260 specialists based in Austria, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, the UK and the US. Our coverage of Asia, Europe and the US enables us to advise our clients in competition cases involving many jurisdictions around the world.