Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, INDUSTRY NEWS: Former UK Office of Fair Trading Officials Ali Nikpay and Deidre Taylor to Join Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, (Apr 5, 2013)

Ali Nikpay, a former Senior Director at the United Kingdom’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT), the UK’s competition authority, and Deidre Taylor, a former Assistant Director at the OFT, will join Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, the law firm has announced. Nikpay will head the competition practice of the firm’s London office, while Tayler will join the London office as of counsel.

Ali Nikpay. At Gibson Dunn, Nikpay will advise clients on European Union and UK cartels, mergers, monopolization cases, and other regulatory investigations. Nikpay previously served as the OFT’s Senior Director for Cartels and Criminal Enforcement from 2009 to 2013, as the OFT’s Senior Director for Policy, Legal Advice and International Issues from 2006 to 2009, and as the OFT’s Senior Director for Competition Case Scrutiny and Policy from 2004 to 2006. He supervised reams of investigators and lawyers, and was a principal decision maker on merger cases. Nikpay helped reshape the UK’s competition enforcement regime, reforming its practices, particularly with respect to cartels and criminal practices.

Prior to joining the OFT, Nikpay spent time in private practice, working on merger cases and competition investigations. He also spent five years at the Directorate General for Competition at the European Commission, serving as lead case handler on a variety of competition and merger cases and assisting policy reforms in the areas of vertical agreements and non-cartel horizontal agreements.

Nikpay co-edits the influential practitioner test "Faull & Nikpay: The EC Law of Competition," and serves on the editorial boards of the European Competition Law Journal, World Competition, and Competition Law International.

Nikpay received a master’s degree in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1993, and studied law at the College of Law and the Inns of Court School of Law. Nikpay teaches as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Oxford and has served as a Visiting Fellow at the LSE.

Deidre Taylor. Taylor had worked at the OFT since 2008, and served as Assistant Director of the Cartels and Criminal Enforcement Group since 2010. She planned civil cartel investigations and oversaw reviews of evidence and key documents. She also served as Senior Advisor to the Competition Policy Team from 2008 to 2010.

Prior to joining the OFT, Taylor practiced competition law as an attorney in the Brussels and London offices of WilmerHale from 1999 to 2008. She also served in the European Commission as Stagiare with the Information Technology and Consumer Electronics Unit of DG Competition from 1998-1999.

Taylor received her BCL from University College Cork in 1995, her LLM from University College Dublin in 1996, and her Barrister-at-Law from the Honorable Society of Kings Inns in 1998.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP is a global law firm with over 1,000 attorneys in 17 offices located throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America. The firm’s Antitrust Practice Group has over 100 attorneys in offices in the United States and Europe.

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