Following several years in the fields of corporate law, restructuring and mergers&acquisitions, I re-oriented my practice in 1985, when I began practising in Brussels. Ever since, I have been practising mainly in the field of antitrust, competition and international trade. In early 1990, I became a partner in Bruckhaus Westrick Stegemann, which merged to become Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in 2000. The initial years until 1995 were marked by assisting the Treuhandanstalt, the German privatization agency, in a number of complex privatizations, all of which lead to State aid procedures before the European Commission. I have managed the Brussels office of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer until my retirement from that firm in September 2006. I joined Howrey LLP as a senior partner in October 2006 and resigned from that firm in April 2009.

In addition to general competition work, my specialization is cartel cases, general competition work, State aid (i.e. anti-subsidy cases within the European Union – in particular, rescue and restructuring aid, investment aid, training aid, State guarantees and State participations and similar measures), as well as antidumping, countervailing duties and WTO trade law.  In these areas, I have mainly advised large European and German companies, and have successfully led many complex competition and trade related litigation cases before the European Court of Justice and the European Court of First Instance, some of them being principal precedents in their respective areas.

My clients come from many sectors including automotive, shipbuilding, steel, paper, telecommunications, media, transport, food/nutrition, energy and the semiconductor industry.

Due to my market reputation, the International Who's Who of Competition Lawyers and Who's Who Legal recognize me as a leading competition specialist. I am also recommended by the JUVE Handbook of German Commercial Law Firms as a lawyer of high international standing in state aid matters and praised by Chambers as a leader in the global practice of WTO/international trade work as well as in competition/antitrust in Brussels.

BAR ADMISSIONS

• Landgericht (District Court) and Kammergericht (Court of Appeals), Berlin
• Barreau de Bruxelles (Brussels Bar), E-List