Saskia King is a legal director in Bird & Bird’s Competition & EU Law team in London with over 15 years’ experience at the cutting edge of UK and EU competition law and policy having worked at regulators, competition authorities, in academia and private practice, with a particular focus on regulated sectors such as payment systems as well as financial, retail, consumer, sport, technology and communications markets more widely. She has particular expertise as a competition enforcement specialist having joined Bird & Bird from the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) where she was a senior lawyer leading the PSR’s first competition cartel investigation in the payments space. She also worked for several years at the Competition and Markets Authority, where she was the legal adviser on a broad range of complex and high profile antitrust investigations and mergers (both at Phase 1 and 2). She also represented the UK’s interests internationally at the OECD Competition Committee. This experience has afforded me valuable insight into antitrust enforcement, policy and regulatory practices, which means she am extremely well-placed to advise clients on every aspect of competition investigations from inception to closure, including complaints, cartel leniency applications, dawn raids, requests for information, evidence gathering, interviews, settlement as well as merger filings, sector enquiries, market studies and competition compliance more generally. She brings in-depth experience and understanding on the application of competition rules to regulated sectors such as payment systems, as well as more widely to financial, communications, retail, consumer, sport and technology markets, having also worked previously as a competition lawyer at an international law firm. Additionally, she taught UK and EU competition law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she completed her doctorate in EU competition law. She has written widely on competition law, particularly on the most egregious restrictions of competition and her published work is often cited in academic texts and papers. She has also the co-author of a chapter in Bellamy & Child. She is particularly interested in the fast-pace of developments in digital markets and advising clients on how to navigate the challenges these developments will bring.
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On 9 June 2021, the European Commission released its preliminary report presenting its key findings of its competition sector inquiry into markets for consumer Internet of Things (IoT) related products and services in the EU. This report was published following a sector inquiry launched in July (...)
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The well-known (and somewhat over-simplistic) paradox that data protection laws aim to keep personal data contained whilst competition law wants personal data to be more freely available is the premise behind the two UK regulators’ latest collaboration. In the last two years, the UK Data (...)
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In March 2021, the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) published its revised Merger Assessment Guidelines (MAGs) along with a Quick Guide, complementing the revision of its Guidance on jurisdiction and procedure, which was published in December 2020. The updated MAGs underpin the CMA’s (...)
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Introduction On the 11th December 2020, the UK Supreme Court (“SC”) handed down its judgment in the case between Walter Hugh Merricks, CBE (“Merricks”) and Mastercard Incorporated (“Mastercard”). The judgment concerns Merricks’ Collective Proceedings Order (“CPO”) application to pursue a class action (...)
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Having fined Compare The Market (‘CTM’) £17.9 million for imposing wide ‘most favoured nation’ (‘MFN’) clauses in its agreements with home insurance companies, on 9 February 2021 the Competition and Markets Authority (‘CMA’) released the non-confidential version of its infringement decision. The (...)
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1. Introduction The application of Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to agreements or practices is dependent on the jurisdictional requirement that a practice must have an appreciable effect on trade between Member States. Unless the ’effect on (...)
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