Antitrust consulting firm dissolves and joins rival firm BRG

Positive competition closes its doors as the team jumps to Berkeley Research Group strengthen your Brussels arm.

Based in California Berkeley Research Group (BRG) recruited a team of economics and antitrust law specialists from a consulting company Positive competition strengthen its recently established European competition practice.

In an email to CDRa BRG spokesman confirmed that Brussels-based Positive Competition, which assisted clients with mergers and antitrust proceedings and also handled subsequent commercial disputes, has closed its advisory business and its team has moved to BRG full-time.

“This is not a joint venture between BRG and Positive Competition. Pozytcyjna Konkurencja no longer operates as a consulting company, but the ambition is for the brand to continue to provide seminars, thinking and research,” says a spokesman.

The main employees include: Dr Alexandra Boutin AND Dr Xavier Boutinwho founded Positive Competition in 2018 and joined BRG’s European competition division as managing directors, taking with him a team of economic consultants.

In the statement regarding LinkedInXavier Boutin said: “The business consulting market has undergone drastic changes over the last few years and more shake-ups are coming. It is time for the market to look beyond traditional brands and inherited heritage.”

These latest additions, tasked with strengthening BRG’s litigation, mergers and antitrust capabilities in Europe and beyond, come eight months after the launch of the consultancy’s European branch, with a 40-strong team currently operating in Paris, Brussels and London.

Aleksandra Boutin, with 20 years of experience in competition policy, specializes in antitrust abuses, mergers, state aid, cartel cases and the calculation of damages in court disputes. She has advised clients in a wide range of areas, including oil and gas, technology, sports, energy and agriculture.

Before founding Positive Competition, Aleksandra Boutin was a senior consultant and vice president at a global economic consulting company Lexecon compass and also served seven years in European CommissionDirectorate-General for Competition department (DG Competition) as a political case analysis specialist, where she dealt with cases involving intellectual property infringements and participated in the development of Commission guidelines on industrial restructuring agreements. She also helped develop the Commission’s procedures for horizontal cooperation agreements and block exemption regulations.

Xavier Boutin is another former senior consultant at Compass Lexecon and former Chief Economist of DG Competition. The most important achievements in Xavier Boutin’s career include supervising complex mergers, including company acquisitions OMV Slovenia by the fuel supplier MOTH and utility company EFFtakeover Arewa NPnuclear reactor construction department of the French national nuclear group Arewa.

In a statement, Aleksandra Boutin said that the BRG team has complementary skills combined with a strong international presence.

“This will allow us to reach jurisdictions in Europe and beyond across our core business of mergers, antitrust and litigation. In addition, we will further expand our expertise in key areas such as state aid, regulations on foreign grants and issues related to the Digital Markets Act, she said.

Dr David Evans, BRG’s global leader for the digital economy and platform markets, added: “A strong EU presence is an integral part of our global strategy to address antitrust, merger and regulatory issues surrounding digital platforms, which are increasingly visible and under scrutiny.” .

The European expansion follows BRG’s appointment of an economics and disputes expert Pablo Spiller as Managing Director of the New York International Arbitration and Cross-Border Disputes group.