Stephen Smith

Practice Areas

Stephen has 20 years’ experience advising across a range of EU and UK competition law matters. Stephen’s practice includes distribution agreements, merger control, cartels and anti-trust investigations, abuse of dominance and competition litigation.

Stephen has represented clients before the European Commission and the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK and on appeals both to the European courts in Luxembourg and to the UK Competition Appeals Tribunal. He advised the Société Co-opérative de Production (SCOP), the company operating Eurotunnel’s MyFerryLink business, in its landmark appeal. The case was the first ever jurisdictional challenge under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act to reach the Supreme Court in the UK.

More recently, Stephen has been advising Dutch listed home furnishings group Hunter Douglas in respect of the CMA’s Phase 1 and Phase 2 reviews of the completed acquisition of 247 Home Furnishings.

He has also has experience of working inside a regulator, having worked at OFCOM, the UK’s communication regulator, earlier in his career.

Career

Qualified 2001

Partner 2011

Joint Managing Partner 2022

Personal

MA Modern and Medieval languages, University of Cambridge

Advocaat bij de Balie te Brussel

Admitted in Republic of Ireland (non-practising)