Biography: Competition

Benoît Merkt is a partner with Lenz & Staehelin and leads the firm's competition and regulated markets group in Geneva.

He graduated from the University of Neuchâtel with a doctor of law degree in 2000 on international cooperation between competition authorities (Walther Hug Price). Previously, he graduated from the University of Oxford in 1996 (MJur in European and Comparative Law) and was a research assistant in international economic law at the University of Bern. He also worked in the legal department of the Swiss Competition Commission in Berne before joining Lenz & Staehelin in 1999.

Benoît Merkt is specialised in all areas of Swiss and European competition law, including in the banking, telecommunications and media, energy, high-tech, motorcar distribution, biotech, retail and food, luxury, chemical and petrochemical industries. He has extensive experience in merger control filings in Switzerland as well as the coordination of multi jurisdictional merger filings in various jurisdictions. He regularly advises and represents Swiss and foreign clients on all areas of competition law, including competition law due diligence and compliance, dawn raids, unilateral practices, horizontal and vertical agreements.

He represents clients in Swiss and European competition law investigations, leniency applications, private enforcement and litigation as well as in appeal proceedings to the Swiss Administrative Court and the Swiss Supreme Court.

Other areas of practice include regulated industries, international trade and European law (Swiss-EU free movement of goods, services and persons) and public procurement law advice and procedures.

Benoît Merkt is a former lecturer in European and Swiss competition law at the University of Geneva and a regular speaker in competition law conferences. He is vice chair and former chair of the Competition Commission of the Union Internationale des Avocats, member of the editorial board of e-competition Bulletin and member of the specialised commission on competition of the Fédération Suisse des Avocats. He has published numerous articles on Swiss and European antitrust and merger control law for national and international publications. He is fluent in French, English and German.

Lenz & Staehelin is a leading Swiss law firm with more than 160 attorneys and a network of three offices in Switzerland providing a full range of legal services and handling all aspects of international and Swiss law. Its client base comprises foreign and Swiss-based multinational groups as well as small and medium-sized enterprises. Lenz & Staehelin operates on both a national and an international level and has developed an extensive international network of correspondence law firms.