About me
Peter Scott is Managing Partner of our Europe, the Middle East and Asia region. Peter is an antitrust and competition lawyer based in London who focuses on all areas of contentious antitrust and competition law work, including High Court and Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) litigation, European Court proceedings, arbitration cases and investigations by the competition authorities.
Peter has a pragmatic and commercial approach, which has resulted in him being recognised in the leading legal directories, including in Chambers & Partners as a tier 1 contentious competition lawyer ("clients report that "he is practical and commercial and has become a trusted advisor to our business""), and in The Legal 500 as a "very commercial" contentious specialist, as "clear and analytical" and who "cuts through to the core arguments". Peter has a practice that "spans the worlds of contentious and non-contentious competition work very well" (The Legal 500).
Peter trained with us and spent the first six years of his career as a general commercial litigator before joining the antitrust and competition team in 2005. He was made a partner in the team two years later. This move was made in response to a significant increase in the number of competition disputes that are being privately litigated before the High Court, as well as the growing number of appeals from regulators’ decisions to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) and 'follow-on' claims for damages being brought before the High Court and the CAT.
Peter has worked on a number of leading and high-profile contentious competition law cases, as well as procurement disputes, including the following:
- representing companies in respect of damages claims brought in the High Court arising from the smart chip, candle waxes and gas insulated switchgear cartels, which follow on from infringement decisions by the European Commission;
- protecting the interests of HSBC Bank in the investigations by the European Commission into interchange fees charged in relation to debit and credit cards, as well as representing HSBC in the related proceedings before the EU’s General Court and Court of Justice;
- successfully represented PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in the Competition Commission’s market investigation into the audit market of the FTSE-350, which concluded with the final decision requiring large companies to tender their audits every ten years, enforcing the existing 'comply or explain' regime under the Listing Rules;
- representing Asda (part of the Walmart group), in an appeal before the Competition Appeal Tribunal, challenging an infringement decision of the UK Office of Fair Trading in respect of the pricing of certain tobacco products.
Peter has also obtained merger clearance decisions from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority, including acting on behalf of the Department for Transport in the award of the East Coast Mainline franchise to Stagecoach.
Peter is a solicitor advocate and obtained his higher rights of audience in 2002. Together with Mark Simpson and James Flett, Peter is the co-author of the England and Wales chapter of the Private Competition Enforcement Review.
Peter is currently serving as an elected representative on the Partnership Committee for EMEA, as well as on the Diversity and Inclusion and the Audit Committees for EMEA.
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