Assimakis Komninos

Assimakis advises on questions of EU and Greek competition law, EU business regulation, international arbitration, litigation and private international law. He has argued both of the only two competition preliminary reference cases to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) from Greece. His practice focuses on complex cases of abuse of dominance, restrictive agreements and merger notifications, and he represents clients before the European Courts, the European Commission, national competition authorities, national courts and international arbitration tribunals. Clients look to Assimakis for his proven track record and his ability to combine quietly resolving the most sensitive and complex investigations with aggressively litigating to achieve the necessary results. Chambers Global 2020 notes that he has "a solid theoretical background, which means he can handle different complex cases", while Legal 500 2020 lauds him for "his professionalism, proactive mentality and good communication ethos." Assimakis has acted before the ECJ in Syfait v. GlaxoSmithKline and Lélos v. GlaxoSmithKline (parallel trade of pharmaceuticals - abuse of dominance), and in GlaxoSmithKline Services v. Commission (parallel trade of pharmaceuticals - Article 101). He has also been involved before the EU General Court in Microsoft v. Commission (compulsory licensing of interoperability information), GlaxoSmithKline Services v. Commission (parallel trade of pharmaceuticals - application of Article 101), Chalkor Metal Works v. Commission (copper plumbing tubes), Public Power Corporation v. Commission (Greek lignites), EAEPC v. Commission (rejection of a complaint), representing GlaxoSmithKline, Google v. Commission (Google Shopping) and Google v. Commission (Google Android). He also successfully represented Aegean Airlines in Aegean/Olympic II, which resulted in the European Commission clearing the deal in a Phase II proceeding. This was the first time that the Commission cleared a merger after it had previously prohibited it. Assimakis has represented clients with excellent results in proceedings before the Albanian, Croatian, Cypriot, French, Greek, Kosovo, Romanian, Russian and Slovenian competition authorities and Belgian, Bulgarian, Cypriot, French, Greek, Latvian, Spanish and Russian courts. He has particular experience in arbitration cases involving competition issues, and in private antitrust litigation cases in national courts. Assimakis is a former Commissioner and Member of the Board of the Hellenic Competition Commission (HCC). Assimakis is currently a visiting professor (2020-2022) at Université Catholique de Louvain, a visiting fellow of the Centre for Law and Governance in Europe at University College London (UCL) and a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Competition Law Centre (GCLC) at the College of Europe. He is a prolific writer on legal matters and often gives speeches and seminars on EU competition law, arbitration and Greek law, and is a non-governmental advisor to the International Competition Network (ICN).