Biography: Competition

David Wood is an English-qualified partner and member of the Brussels Bar based in the Brussels office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He is a member of the firm's antitrust and trade regulation, financial institutions and media, entertainment and technology practice groups.

Mr Wood has specialised in antitrust for over 20 years and his practice encompasses the full range of antitrust issues including cartels, merger control (often involving the coordination of cases before several different competition authorities), abuse of dominance, restrictive agreements, sector inquiries and private enforcement.

He has particular experience with cases involving abusive pricing and refusals to supply by dominant undertakings, as well as the establishment of joint dominance and network-related issues. He has strong sectoral expertise in the financial services and media/high-tech sectors and is also experienced in the pharmaceutical, chemical, software, consumer electronics and transport sectors.

Prior to joining Gibson Dunn, Mr Wood spent 10 years (from 1992) at the antitrust enforcement division of the European Commission (DG Competition), including positions as head of the financial services unit and acting head of the media unit. He is one of the few lawyers in private practice to have held a senior position in DG Competition, meaning he brings to his clients not only deep experience of European antitrust enforcement, but also valuable insights into how to manage risk and avoid problems. During his time at the Commission he was responsible for the teams involved in some of the most hard-fought cartel cases and some of the most high-profile and complex media, transport and financial services cases. He was also a member of the Commission working groups responsible for most of the significant developments in EU antitrust policy and appeared regularly before the European Courts of Justice. He returned to private practice in Brussels in 2002.

Since leaving the Commission, Mr Wood has successfully advised and represented a wide range of companies principally in the financial services and media sectors but also in the pharmaceutical, chemical, software, consumer electronics and transport sectors. His recent merger experience includes significant matters before the European Commission and national competition authorities (and the coordination of world-wide merger filings) in the hi-tech, defence, industrial, building materials, chemicals and financial services sectors. He has been particularly heavily involved in cases involving network industries such as stock exchanges, payments processing and internet advertising.

As part of Gibson Dunn's world-class global cartel defence practice, Mr Wood is currently involved in a high proportion of the Commission's current cartel investigations.

Mr Wood is renowned for his deep experience of the full range of issues involved in European antitrust enforcement and is consistently recognised as a leading European antitrust practitioner. He is a member of the editorial board of Competition Law Insight.