Mark is head of the London Antitrust group. He has extensive experience of counselling and representing clients on complex mergers and strategic alliances, cartel, dominance and market investigations, both at EU and national level. His practice also encompasses state aid, antitrust litigation and economic regulation.
He has extensive experience of acting for clients in highly sensitive and complex areas and has particular expertise in advising on regulatory and competition issues in regulated sectors including the air traffic control, water, energy, postal services and rail sectors.
Mark has acted on several of the groundbreaking and notably complex cases in the new UK merger regime, including the landmark Lloyds/HBOS, Co-op/Somerfield and Boots/Alliance UniChem cases. He also has high profile experience in European merger control advising Sun Microsystems on its merger with Oracle, and Thomson on its acquisition of Reuters (now the subject of an appeal before the European Court).
Mark is recognised as a 'leading individual' in his field in both the Chambers and Legal 500 legal directories and noted for being 'exceptionally effective and intelligent.' He is particularly renowned for his competition disputes and regulatory work (Chambers UK 2009).
He was listed as one of only five antitrust lawyers globally who are recognised as ‘client service leaders’ in the 2010 BTI Client Service All-Stars report.
BA, Law, University of Cambridge, 1979
Licence, European Law, L'Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1983
Friend. M, 2006, "EC State Aids", Chapter on state guarantees, Sweet & Maxwell
Friend. M, 2003, "Takeover Frenzy in UK Electricity- How The Map Was Re-drawn", examining the impact of M&A activity on the development of merger policy in the UK electricity sector, Allen & Overy
Friend. M, 2003, "The Law of State Aid in the European Union", Chapter on state guarantees, OUP
Numerous articles on competition law and economic regulation in leading academic journals