When trying to “shake things up” in the competition legal market, who better than someone that spent over seven years as the regulator’s legal director?
Tom Smith helped establish the Brussels-based competition law firm Geradin Partners in London in 2021. “We are the only firm on the challenger side of the Big Tech debate,” Smith told City AM as part of Eyes on the Law.
Unlike many of the firms in the City, Geradin Partners doesn’t represent the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon or Meta.
Instead, its clients include Match Group, Tinder, News Corporation, Bauer Media, Checkatrade, and Coalition for App Fairness.
Tom Smith, London managing partner of Geradin Partners
Smith spent a large part of his career at the Competition Market Authority (CMA), where he witnessed the regulator’s expanding powers from the inside.
One major power for the CMA was introduced by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (DMCC), which made it through the wash-up before Parliament was suspended last May.
As a result, the CMA will, for the first time, be empowered to determine consumer law breaches and impose considerable fines directly upon infringing businesses.
Smith stated that “this new regime is a good thing, as it will curb the market power of the digital giants” and added that “we are helping companies prepare for it and benefit from it.”
It is no surprise that he saw the regime coming. Not only did he lead the Digital Markets Task Force at the CMS, “which had basically proposed this to the government in December 2020”, but Geradin Partners was the “only firm” to give evidence to Committees on the Bill.
However, he pointed out, “I have been waiting for all the big firms to snap into gear at some point, to notice this massive new thing coming, and they really haven’t, which is a puzzle to me.”
He noted that those big firms representing Google and Apple are therefore engaged in that work, but added it’s a “real puzzle” that those other firms with competition teams have not spotted this work.
“For whatever reason, it has benefited us to have cornered the market a bit,” he added.
Geradin Partners has opened offices in Paris and Amsterdam and as of last Tuesday (1 October), it expanded into Scandinavia with an office in Helsinki.
Eyes on the Law is a weekly column focused on the legal sector.