Mr. Grasso is a counsel in WilmerHale’s Regulatory and Government Affairs Department, and a member of the Antitrust and Competition and European Regulatory Practice Groups. His practice focuses on European and Italian antitrust and competition law, as well as EU law. Mr. Grasso joined the firm in 2008, and was resident in the Washington, DC office from June 2008 to December 2008. He has been a member of the Lecce Bar since 2006. Mr. Grasso’s practice encompasses counseling on EU and Italian legal issues, particularly on cartel and abuse of dominance cases, as well as merger policy and EU State aid law. He has assisted multinational companies in antitrust litigation proceedings before the European Court of First Instance and the Italian Supreme Court. Mr. Grasso has also secured several merger clearances before the Italian Competition Authority and performed multi-jurisdictional merger analysis in a number of jurisdictions around the world. Mr. Grasso has gained experience in assisting clients both in the United States and Europe in a wide range of industries, including investment banking and financial services, manufacturing, airports and chemicals. Prior to joining WilmerHale, from 2005 to 2007, Mr. Grasso was an associate in both the antitrust, competition and trade and the energy groups of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Rome. Mr. Grasso also trained with the Legal Service of the European Commission, Competition Unit, in Brussels, where he worked on cases concerning mergers and acquisitions, cartels and other issues regarding EC Law, pending before the European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance. From September 2004 to March 2005 Mr. Grasso joined Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in Rome, where he mainly worked on merger clearance, cartel and abuse of dominance cases. From March 2005 Mr. Grasso joined the Legal Service of the Italian Competition Authority, in Rome, where he focused on drafting legal opinions in the fields of competition and consumer law and in the assistance in trials before the Italian Administrative courts. Mr. Grasso regularly publishes articles on EU and US competition law. Most recently he was author of “The E.U. Leniency Program and U.S. Discovery Rules: a Fraternal Fight?”, Michigan Journal of International Law, Vol. 29:565.
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