Philip Mansfield

Practice Areas

Philip Mansfield has led meetings with agencies around the world on merger, cartel and behavioural matters for various clients, including with the European Commission, UK agencies, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Court of North California, South Korea's Fair Trade Commission, the Japan Fair Trade Commission and China's Ministry of Commerce.

Philip regularly obtains approval for complex mergers and joint venture arrangements, particularly in the high-tech sector and was twice a winner of the Global Competition Review Matter of the Year. His experience includes advising Maersk Drilling on its merger with Noble Corporation; Maersk on its acquisition of LF Logistics; NortonLifeLock on its acquisition of Avast; Refinitiv (and shareholder Blackstone) on the EC review and worldwide filings of Refinitiv's proposed USD27bn acquisition by the London Stock Exchange Group; Symantec Corporation on the US$10.7 billion sale of its Enterprise business to Broadcom; Hitachi on its JV with Honda in the automotive sector; a multinational information technology company on its acquisition of Apogee; Cisco on the sale of its NDS business; GitHub on its sale to Microsoft and Seagate on its acquisition of Samsung HDD and Xyratex.

Philip has extensive cartel experience and is a regular speaker at the signature IBA/ABA cartel conference. In 2016 Philip won Global Competition Review Behavioural Matter of the Year for the firm’s role on the European Commission’s credit defaults swap investigation. Matters include advising a party in the first EU settlement case (DRAM); as well as advising parties in each of the FX, Rubber Chemicals, EPDM, Heat Stabilisers, GIS, Power Transformer, LCD, CRT and Auto Parts investigations. More recently Philip has developed extensive experience in advising financial institutions on a number of cartel investigations and Financial Conduct Authority market studies, including strategies surrounding the merits of making immunity/leniency applications to the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the EC and engaging in settlement discussions with the EC. Philip recently successfully guided the subsidiary of a global financial institution through the Financial Conduct Authority’s first ever investigation brought using its competition enforcement powers. He is currently advising clients on their defences to several separate follow-on damages actions before the English and German courts and has represented claimants in the English courts.

Philip has an established track record of representing companies in successfully raising and defending behavioural complaints before the EC and the English courts relating to interoperability (Sun Microsystems/Microsoft, PSI/IBM), bundling (Microsoft/Opera, Microsoft/Vista), patent pools (Premaitha, DVD6C/iODRA) and patent ambush (Micron/Rambus).

"Philip Mansfield has an amazing ability to go to the core of the competitive query, brainstorm and intuitively advise on the spot in a way that rationalizes and clarifies the inhouse legal thinking and analysis." - Legal 500 2024 - EU and Competition

"We chose to work with Phil Mansfield because of his excellent work in this area, his knowledge of our industry and business, and his practical and efficient style with complex and difficult work." - Chambers UK 2024, Competition Law

"You go to Philip when you need a quick and brilliant thinker who dares to take an innovative approach for competitive analysis and an assessment of risk and mitigation that is straight, on-point and sensible." - Legal 500 2024 - EU and Competition

"Philip is an absolutely outstanding adviser."- Chambers UK 2023, Competition Law