Mark Griffiths

Mark is an antitrust and competition lawyer based in Johannesburg. Prior to joining the practice, Mark was the Competition Counsel for Barclays Africa Group where he was accountable for competition risk management across the African continent for Barclays. He has been heavily involved in antitrust and merger matters across 12 African jurisdictions with active competition authorities and has been involved in a number of pivotal developments across the region. Prior to his appointment to Barclays in 2007, he was a senior associate (admitted as a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales) in the EU and competition practice of a leading London law firm. He was part of a strong practice focusing on the application of competition law to financial services and advised clients across the financial services value chain. He also previously worked for DG Competition at the European Commission as well as being specialist legal advisor to the House of Lords EU Select Committee on the EU Financial Services Action Plan. Mark is a regular contributor to legal journals and speaker on African competition law. He has a LLB (University of Southampton, UK) and a LLM in European Law (College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium). Mark is one of a handful of practitioners active at a substantive level across Africa (including Indian Ocean). In this regard, he offers a unique perspective of the developmental state of African competition law and has been involved in a number of pivotal developments across the region. He is a trusted advisor for many competition authorities across Africa. Mark has been extensively involved in matters relating to cartels, abuse of dominance, market investigations, complaints and mergers across Africa. In addition to South Africa, he has material experience in Zambia, Mauritius, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania and Botswana. Mark has also considerable experience in relation to the competition laws of COMESA and UEMOA. He further has extensive payments regulatory experience in South Africa and the rest of Africa. He has been involved a number of fundamental regulatory matters in South Africa over the last few years, such as the setting up of the SARB interchange fee review. He acted as a PASA Councilor for over two years.