Morten Nissen

Automotive; Competition Law; Energy & Utilities; Financial Services; Life Sciences and Healthcare; Media; Entertainment and Sport; Retail and Consumer; Technology & Communications

Morten is a partner and co-head of our international Competition & EU group. He also leads the Competition Law team in Denmark. He has a particular focus on applying competition & EU law as a tool to achieve specific and measurable business objectives for our clients.

Competition authorities act differently in different countries. Morten has solid international experience and an outlook based on working for more than 12 years as a lawyer based in Brussels, which includes doing a number of fascinating competition cases in many countries across Europe as well as Asia. This first-hand experience helps him better navigate cases to obtain results that make a difference.

Morten's primary focus is on state aid, competition restricting agreements, and abuse of dominance. He has made numerous EU and national merger control notifications, and is always focused on optimising the business outcome and delivering competitive advantage. He is proud to say that he has been involved in a high number of cases that made new case law. His sector experience is particularly strong in the pharmaceutical, copyright, media, IT, telecoms, passenger transport and international payment systems sectors.

Over the years, Morten has represented clients in a large number of legal procedures before the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Amongst these, he has won four appeal cases against the EU Commission, including a state aid case before the Grand Chamber of the EU court of justice which ultimately led to the EU Commission's Legal Service turning around and choosing him to represent the Commission in a number of other state aid cases.

Until 2012, Morten was a partner in the Brussels office. He left Bird & Bird to start a pharmaceutical business and other start-ups. After this, he was Of Counsel at a leading Danish firm, before finding his way home back to Bird & Bird in 2018. At Bird & Bird, he benefits from a truly international set-up and has a personal network that allows him to know exactly who is well placed to handle a particular case in one of the many offices around the word. It particularly allows him to pull in points of view from a high-quality pool of 65 competition lawyers around the world.

Morten is a member of the Advisory Board of World Competition, Law and Economics Journals (Kluwer)

Morten Nissen is the co-author of 'Guide to EU Pharmaceutical Regulatory Law' (Kluwer).