Vincent Smith

Vincent Smith

Vincent Smith - Of Counsel

Solicitor specialising in competition, EU and regulatory law with 20+ years of public and private sector experience

Solicitor – England & Wales.
Visiting Fellow at British Institute of International and Comparative Law

Vincent Smith, formerly Senior Director of Competition at the UK Office of Fair Trading, has agreed to join G&Co in  an of Counsel role.

Vincent well known to our team having previously been a Brussels based practitioner for a number of years.

In addition to supporting the further development of our competition practice, Vincent also brings that most valuable of commodities: a real understanding of how national Competition Authorities think and work in the EU and a unique network of contacts.

Vincent will be able to provide valuable counselling, advice and support on all aspects of EU competition law, we suggest that Vincent could be of considerable assistance to any clients who have cases before any of the EU NCAs (but of course in particular the OFT).

The following highlights of Vincent's time at the OFT and elsewhere  give a flavour  of the situations in which Vincent's strategic and legal skills could be of particular assistance:

  • led the settlement negotiations in independent schools which led to the first ‘settlement’ of a public administrative enforcement action in Europe;
  • supervising the ground breaking Mastercard interchange fees decision in the UK;
  • involved in all of the OFT’s major cartel investigations during his tenure (2002 – 06).  In particular he initiated the first steps in the UK to ‘fast track’ groups of cartel cases for public enforcement purposes;
  • oversaw the OFT’s input to the later stages of negotiating and then implementing the ‘devolved’ European competition enforcement regime under EC Regulation 1/2003 in the UK;
  • took the initiative in shaping the OFT’s ongoing work on encouraging a greater degree of private enforcement of competition law through damages actions in the UK and returned to private practice to focus on this area of litigation.