Marc Waha

Marc Waha leads our Asia Antitrust and Competition Team. He is based in the Hong Kong and Tokyo offices.

Marc advises international companies on antitrust regimes in East Asia, and Asian companies on global competition compliance issues, multi-jurisdictional merger filings and international cartel investigations, particularly in Europe and Asia. For more than 20 years he has represented clients active in a wide variety of industrial and services sectors, with a focus on advising Asian companies on global antitrust and competition law matters.

Recent work highlights include:

advising two airlines in respect of investigations by the Hong Kong and Malaysian competition authorities into their proposed joint venture arrangements;

advising QatarEnergy in respect of Asian merger control clearances for eight parallel natural gas joint ventures with international energy companies;

securing merger control clearance for one of the world's largest Sino-foreign upstream oil joint ventures;

representing a third party in obtaining the imposition of remedies by Japan's Fair Trade Commission in respect of Google's acquisition of Fitbit (the authority's first ex officio review of a foreign transaction as a "killer acquisition");

securing the end of an investigation by the Hong Kong Competition Commission into a ports terminal joint venture by way of commitments;

assisting the operator of a digital marketplace in respect of an investigation by the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore, with the authority deciding not to take action;

securing unconditional clearances across Asia for the merger of the two largest airlines in Hong Kong; and

successfully defending a respondent in the first court case brought by the Hong Kong Competition Commission, with the court dismissing the Commission's case.

Marc is the author of the first edition of the Hong Kong Competition Law Handbook (Butterworths). He and the Norton Rose Fulbright team have been involved in training programmes for Asian competition authorities. Legal guides have ranked our Asia Competition Team as a top tier competition practice and Marc as a leading lawyer for several years, commenting as follows: "High reputation for his merger control clearance work" (Chambers & Partners Global Guide); and "Clients praise Marc Waha as a 'business-minded, straight-to-the-point and brilliant lawyer'" (European Legal 500).