In August 2017, Piotr Skurzyński and Dr Maciej Gac joined the Warsaw office of Hogan Lovells.
Legal counsel Piotr Skurzyński has started as the Counsel who now leads the Practice of Competition Law at Hogan Lovells in which he is supported by Dr Maciej Gac, attorney Magdalena Kowara, and trainee lawyer Marta Kownacka.
Piotr Skurzyński specializes in all aspects of Polish and EU competition law. His experience includes counselling in the area of state aid law, consumer law, and EU law. Moreover, he is well versed in completing projects related to regulating various infrastructure sectors; in particular the telecommunications, energy, and railway sectors. Before joining Hogan Lovells, Piotr Skurzyński worked in the Warsaw offices of two leading law firms for over 12 years. During this time he provided advice for subjects covering different economic sectors, i.e. energy, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, wholesale and retail, and FMCG producers. He represented clients before the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, and the European Commission in proceedings related to competition restricting agreements and the overuse of a dominant position on the market. He worked in many international M&A transactions, providing legal aid concerning matters related to the compliance of transactional documents with competition law, and furthermore he represented clients in complex proceedings concerning concentration audits before the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, as well as the European Commission. He participated in the preparation of competition law compatibility programmes, and has given many training sessions in this area.
Piotr Skurzyński is regularly recommended by the international ranking (Chambers Europe) as a leading expert in competition law. and is a member of the Competition Law Association. He has numerous publications related to this topic to his name.
Piotr Skurzyński received his higher education from the Law and Administration Department at Warsaw University. He is also a graduate of the British Law Centre led by the Institute of Continuing Education – a joint venture between the University of Cambridge, and the University of Warsaw.
Dr Maciej Gac specialises in domestic and EU competition law, consumer law, and private international law. His experience includes providing complex legal counselling services in terms of anti-monopoly law, consumer law, as well as widely understood law of the EU internal market. He supports clients in creating distribution models, entering trade agreements, and starting joint ventures. He provides advice to his clients on both their current business activities (evaluating the actions taken in terms of their compliance with competition and consumer law) and represents companies in proceedings before the competition protection and regulating authorities. He has a great deal of experience in creating compliance programmes for businesses, as well as in implementing compliance policies withcompetition law. Amongst his career-related interests are matters related to providing cross border services, and group dispute resolutions.
Dr Maciej Gac also conducts active academic and didactic enterprises both domestically and abroad. He is a lecturer for the postgraduate degree in competition law at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Dr Gac graduated from the Law and Administration Department at the Jagiellonian University, as well as from the Law Department at the University of Toulouse. In September 2016, he defended his thesis (with honours) on the subject of the usage of competition law by private law which was prepared as part of the academic cooperation between the afore-mentionedUniversities.
Beata Balas-Noszczyk, the managing partner of the Warsaw Hogan Lovells office said, "I am convinced, that Piotr Skurzyński's experience and abilities supported by Dr Maciej Gac, as well as all the other lawyers from the Competition Law Practice at Hogan Lovells, will provide substantial value for our Clients. We are glad that such experienced specialists have joined our team."