Speaker details

Biography

Based in Brussels, Thomas heads Freshfields’ global antitrust, competition and trade practice group. He specialises in EU and international antitrust law, covering transactional and behavioural matters as well as related litigation. He regularly guides clients through complex multijurisdictional mandates, managing cross-border challenges and parallel proceedings before several authorities as well as leading teams of Freshfields lawyers and local counsel around the world. Thomas’ experience crosses a range of industry sectors with a particular focus on regulated industries including telecommunications, media and technology. He guided Liberty Global’s subsidiary Telenet, the largest provider of cable broadband services in Belgium, through the European Commission’s in-depth investigation of its €1.3bn ‘fixed to mobile’ acquisition of Belgium’s third-largest mobile network operator, BASE. He was also part of the team that secured unconditional clearance for BT Group’s high profile multi-billion acquisition of EE, which united the UK’s largest fixed and mobile telecoms operators. Thomas advised EMI on a variety of cases including its successful defence of an abuse of dominance complaint relating to the distribution of online music and France Télécom in the landmark Wanadoo case concerning predatory pricing in the high speed Internet access sector. Outside the TMT sector, Thomas’ current work includes advising Anheuser-Busch InBev on its defence of an investigation launched by the European Commission into alleged abuse of dominance on the Belgian beer market relating to parallel trade.