Patrick Bock is a partner at Cleary Gottlieb, based in the Brussels office. He joined the Washington office of the firm in 2003 and was on a first rotation in the Brussels office from 2007 to 2009. After becoming partner in 2013, he spent five years in the firm’s Cologne office, before returning to Brussels in 2018. Patrick Bock’s practice focuses on European and U.S. antitrust and competition matters. He has extensive experience advising on all aspects of EU and U.S. antitrust and competition law. He advises companies in securing merger control and foreign direct investment approvals from competition and other regulatory authorities across Europe and the United States, and manages the coordination of complex merger control proceedings globally. He regularly assists clients in the defense of cartel and other anti-competitive practice investigations (including abuse of dominance cases) brought by competition authorities globally, as well as in follow-on damages actions by private claimants. He advises a range of clients on an ongoing basis on complex antitrust compliance matters and best practices. He regularly appears before the European Commission, the German Bundeskartellamt, the Federal Trade Commission, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
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The European Commission (“EC”), on July 9, 2021 [1], published its long-anticipated proposed update of the Vertical Block Exemption Regulation [2] (“VBER”) and the corresponding draft Vertical Restraints Guidelines (“Vertical Guidelines”) [3] for public consultation and comment by September (...)
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In September 2020, Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager announced that from mid-2021 the European Commission (“EC”) would “start accepting referrals from national competition authorities of mergers that are worth reviewing at the EU level – whether or not those authorities had the power (...)
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In a landmark Judgment delivered on May 28, the General Court overturned the European Commission’s 2016 prohibition of the Three/O2 UK mobile telecommunications merger. The Judgment raises the bar for the Commission in respect of (1) the legal standard the Commission must meet; (2) the (...)
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In a landmark Judgment delivered on May 28, the General Court overturned the European Commission’s 2016 prohibition of the Three/O2 UK mobile telecommunications merger. The Judgment raises the bar for the Commission in respect of (1) the legal standard the Commission must meet; (2) the (...)
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Introduction Early in his Second Inaugural Address, President Obama declared: “Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play”. With this statement, President Obama became just the sixth president to make reference to the (...)
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Introduction Early in his Second Inaugural Address, President Obama declared: “Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play”. With this statement, President Obama became just the sixth president to make reference to the (...)
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After a decade of what was perceived by many as relatively restrained merger enforcement, the Obama administration has repeatedly and vocally vowed to “reinvigorate antitrust enforcement” and to “take effective action to stop or restructure mergers that are likely to harm consumer[s]”. (...)
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After a decade of what was perceived by many as relatively restrained merger enforcement, the Obama administration has repeatedly and vocally vowed to “reinvigorate antitrust enforcement” and to “take effective action to stop or restructure mergers that are likely to harm consumer[s]”. (...)
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After a decade of what was perceived by many as relatively restrained merger enforcement, the Obama administration has repeatedly and vocally vowed to “reinvigorate antitrust enforcement” and to “take effective action to stop or restructure mergers that are likely to harm consumer[s]”. (...)
