Spencer Weber Waller, Keynote Speaker

Spencer Weber Waller is the John Paul Stevens Chair in Competition Law, Director of the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies, and Professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law where he teaches antitrust, intellectual property, civil procedure, and international litigation courses. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the American Antitrust Institute and the editorial boards of the Antitrust Law Journal and the World Competition Law and Economics Review. Professor Waller is the author, co-author, or editor of 8 books and over one hundred articles on United States and international antitrust, including Antitrust and American Business Abroad, the leading treatise in the field, and the first full-length biography of Thurman Arnold, the founder of modern antitrust enforcement in the United States. He is the co-editor and contributor to Brands, Competition Law and IP (Cambridge University Press 2015). His recent scholarship focuses on antitrust, brands, class actions, high-tech industries, innovation, and intellectual property. In 2022, he served as a Senior Adviser to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Professor Waller previously taught and served as associate dean at Brooklyn Law School. 

Dubravka Akšamović

Dubravka Aksamovic (L.L.M, PhD) is full professor and Head of Department of Business Law at Faculty of Law Osijek, Croatia. She regularly teaches several courses at undergraduate and post graduate studies: Contract Law, Company Law, Competition Law and Insolvency Law. She is a head of clinical program at Faculty of Law in Osijek and one of founders of Croatian Association for Competition Law and Policy. She holds Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in EU Competition Law.  She is a co-author of two books and numerous articles, essays and chapters in books dedicated to different fields of law. She is member of several domestic and international associations, Croatian Academy of Legal Science, GAJE, ENCLE, ASCOLA. 

Oles Andriychuk

Prof. Oles Andriychuk teaches Competition Law and Digital Markets at Newcastle University Law School. He also directs an independent academic initiative Digital Markets Research Hub. Oles' research is focused on analysing the normative aspects of competition law and policy as well as on the current development of digital competition law. His paper on the socio-legal nature of the Digital Markets Act has been awarded the best law paper 2022 prize by the Portuguese Competition Authority. His latest paper "Do DMA obligations for gatekeepers create entitlements for business users?", Journal of Antitrust Enforcement questions the legitimacy of treating the DMA obligations as business users' rights. He also edited a book dedicated to the scholarship of a distinguished European antitrust thinker Prof. Giuliano Amato ("Antitrust and the Bounds of Power – 25 Years On", Hart/Bloomsbury Collection, 2023) 

Maciej Bernatt

Maciej Bernatt is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Warsaw. He holds the Chair in European Economic Law at the Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw and he is the director of the Centre for Antitrust and Regulatory Studies. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies. Maciej's research interests lie at the intersection of competition law and constitutional law, administrative law and EU law. His newest book discusses the illiberal influence of populist governments on competition law system. You may view Maciej's research at http://ssrn.com/author=1183912 and at https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6765-9115. 

Ondrej Blažo

Ondrej Blažo graduated from the Faculty of Law at Comenius University in Bratislava as well as from the Faculty of National Economy at the University of Economics in Bratislava. He is an Associate Professor in international law specializing in EU law, EU competition law, and economic integration, currently Director of the Institute of European Law, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Law of Comenius University Bratislava, and editor in chief of Bratislava Law Review. Previously he has been a senior state counsel at the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic as a case handler and at the legal and EU affairs department (co-authored several legislative documents on Slovak competition rules). He is the author and co-author of publications focused particularly on competition law, EU competition law, and EU public procurement law, including commentary on the Slovak Act on Protection Competition. His research was supported by national and international grants, including Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence "Rule of Law in the European Union", APVV "Effectivization of legal regulation of public procurement and its application in the context of EU law" (leader of the research team), APVV "Effectiveness of legal regulation of protection of economic competition in the context of its application in practice". 

Mislav Bradvica

Mislav Bradvica is a Croatian lawyer with substantial experience in corporate law, litigation and regulatory mandates. He is a specialist in corporate law and competition law and especially deals with all legal issues that are stemming from the position of the companies operating in regulated industries. In addition, he has more than fifteen years of experience in advising domestic and foreign companies from the banking sector, as well as the telecommunications and media sectors. He also gained work experience working for biggest Croatian companies and the Croatian competition Agency. From time to time, he writes on competition law. 

Vlatka Butorac Malnar

Vlatka Butorac Malnar is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka, where she teaches Competition law and European private law to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. She is the president of the Croatian Competition Law and Policy Association, a non-governmental advisor for the ICN, a member of ICC, the scientific board of Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies and a member of the International advisory board of Legal Yearbook IPP-PF. She holds the LL.M and S.J.D. degrees from the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Over the years, she researched in a number of academic institutions (Cornell Law School, NY, USA; Max-Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg, Germany, European University Institute, Florence, Italy). Her work in the area of competition has been published by a some of most renown international publishers. She is engaged in educational and advisory activities for legal practitioners. 

Renato Ferrandi

Renato is the Director of International and EU Affairs of the Italian Competition Authority. He represents the Authority in international fora (including OECD, UNCTAD and ICN), manages bilateral cooperation projects and participates as speaker in international exchanges and capacity building projects. Renato has more than twenty years of experience on competition and consumer protection. He was case manager of numerous investigations at the Italian Competition Authority, carried out several market studies and drafted formal opinions addressed to the Government or the Parliament. Between May 2019 and January 2023 he joined the OECD as the responsible for the capacity-building programme for competition authorities in Eastern European countries provided by the Regional Competition Centre in Budapest. He was also Seconded National Expert at the DG COMP of the European Commission for three years, between 2010 and 2013.  He worked inter alia on the Ebooks case, on a State infringement case regarding digital TV spectrum in Italy, and on the assignment of premium sports rights in Europe.

Lena Hornkohl

Lena Hornkohl is a Tenure Track Professor for European Law at the University of Vienna and a postdoctoral researcher (Habilitation) at the University of Heidelberg She worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxemburg (2020 – 2022), a lawyer for an international law firm in Brussels (2019 – 2020), and as a Research Fellow at the University of Heidelberg (2014 – 2019). She holds a PhD in Law (Heidelberg), an LLM (College of Europe) and both German Legal State Exams. Her main research interests are European Law, Competition Law, Civil Law, Commercial Law, Comparative Law, Procedural Law, and International Private Law.  

Nebojša Jovović

Nebojša Jovović, PhD was born in 1989 in Nikšić, Montenegro. Since 2017, he has been employed at the Agency for the Protection of Competition, where he has worked in the field of competition protection and control of state aid. Before joining the Agency, he worked as an economic and financial analyst and consultant. In addition to the practical experience he gained through his long-term work at the Agency, he also researched this area through scientific research, and as a result, he defended his doctoral dissertation on a topic from the field of competition. He gained knowledge in the field of competition protection and state aid at numerous projects, seminars and trainings. He is the author of several scientific and professional works. 

Massimiliano Kadar

Massimiliano Kadar is the Deputy Head of Unit A.1 at the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission (DG COMP), in charge of antitrust policy and case coordination. In his position at DG COMP, Massimiliano is leading the team responsible for the ongoing evaluation of Regulation 1/2003. In addition, Massimiliano is in charge of DG COMP’s policy work on Article 102. Between 2011 and 2020, Massimiliano worked as case handler and manager on both antitrust and merger control cases in a variety of sectors at DG COMP, and before then in private practice at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and Gianni Origoni Grippo Cappelli & Partners. He is a visiting lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin and has published several articles on competition policy, with a particular emphasis Article 102 and merger control enforcement in the information technology sector. 

Mirta Kapural

Mirta Kapural is the president of the Competition Council of Croatian Competition Agency since 1 October 2021. Prior, she was a member of the Competition Council and deputy Head of International and European Department. She is a lawyer by profession with PhD in Company law and Competition law (University of Zagreb) and Master in European studies (University of Sussex). Ms Kapural is an author of many expert articles in Competition Law and regular lecturer of Competition law at universities and conferences and she has been engaged as an expert for competition law in different EU funded projects. 

Assimakis Komninos

Assimakis Komninos is a Partner at White & Case LLP. His court highlights include representing Google in the Android and Heureka cases, Amazon in the Italian carve-out case (BuyBox), CCIA in Google Shopping, GlaxoSmithKline in the Syfait, Lelos and GSK Spain cases, and being part of the Microsoft litigation team (2004-2009). He was a Commissioner and Member of the Board of the Hellenic Competition Commission between 2009 and 2011. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Competition Law Centre (GCLC) at the College of Europe and a visiting professor at Panthéon-Assas University Paris II (2022). 

Malgorzata Kozak

Malgorzata Kozak, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, School of Law. She specializes in European Union law and competition law including private and public enforcement, compliance systems and vertical restraints. She is also managing editor of the Utrecht Law Review. She recently co-authored the Report on NRA Independence for BEREC. She also successfully represented the client in Sped-Pro v. Commission. 

Mario Krka

Mario Krka is a senior partner at Divjak, Topić, Bahtijarević & Krka law firm from Zagreb. He graduated from Zagreb Law School and holds Master of Law and Business degree from Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, and Otto Beisheim School of Management, Vallendar, Germany. He is the head of the firm’s competition department, with many years of experience in all segments of competition law. Mario successfully represented major clients from a range of industries, in merger clearance proceedings as well as in antitrust matters, before the Croatian Competition Agency as well as the High Administrative Court. Mario is also very active in mergers and acquisitions, and corporate and commercial legal areas. He was a member of the Croatian task force on the transposition of the EU Damages Directive, and is a co-author of the recently published book “Ugovori o distribuciji, EU- Hrvatska” (1st edition, Zagreb, Narodne novine, 2022, with F. Wijckmans and F. Tuytschaever). 

Marijana Liszt

Marijana Liszt is the founder and the managing partner of the Liszt & Partners Law firm and a practising attorney since 2002. She graduated from the Zagreb Law School, obtained a master’s degree in EU law at the University Carlos III of Madrid and completed a master’s course in EU law at the Zagreb Law School. In 2005 Marijana was appointed by the government of the Republic of Croatia as head of the working group on Chapter 8 – Competition and served in that position from 2005 until the closing of the EU Accession negotiations in 2011. She is now a PhD candidate at the Law School of the University of Rijeka, working on a thesis in the topic of state aid law, in particular the public financing of services of general economic interest. Her fields of expertise are competition law, including state aid law, commercial law, company law and sports law. She is an author of a number of articles and book chapters in competition and state aid law and a visiting lecturer at the Zagreb Law School. 

Zoltán Marosi

Mr Zoltán Marosi is the co-head of Competition and Antitrust in DLA Piper Budapest. His main area of expertise lies in Hungarian and EU antitrust law, consumer protection law and administrative litigation.  He has published numerous articles and book excerpts in the fields of competition law, commercial law and European Union law. He is currently a lecturer of EU law and EU competition law at ELTE School of Law and serves as a member of the Hungarian committee of bar examiners. Furthermore, he is an officer of the International Bar Association, serving on its Antitrust Committee. Zoltán is also a non-governmental advisor in the International Competition Network to the European Commission's DG COMP. 

Marek Martyniszyn

Prof. Marek Martyniszyn is a Professor of Competition Law & Policy at Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland). He specialises in international and cross-borders aspects of competition law and policy, including the limits of extraterritorial jurisdiction and state involvement in anticompetitive practices (including the issue of foreign subsidies). His research has a strong perspective of new competition systems and new agencies, especially those in developing countries and economies in transition. Prof. Martyniszyn is a Non-Governmental Advisor to the International Competition Network (ICN). He had presented his work also on various other fora, including UNCTAD and COMESA. His online profile is available at: http://go.qub.ac.uk/Martyniszyn 

Margarida Matos Rosa

Margarida Matos Rosa is former President of the Portuguese Competition Authority (AdC), Portugal’s competition authority, and former Vice-Chair of ICN, the international network of competition authorities. She previously worked for the Portuguese Securities Markets Commission (CMVM), heading the investment management supervision department. Prior to this, she worked for the financial private sector at BNP Paribas, Santander Investment and UBS Bank, in the areas of economic research, investment banking and investment management. Margarida Matos Rosa holds an M.P.A. from Princeton University and an undergraduate degree in Economics from UC Louvain (Belgium). 

Andrej Matvoz

Andrej Matvoz graduated from the Faculty of Law in Maribor. He started his career as a lawyer in the municipality, continued as a lawyer at the Ministry and was later independent legal advisor. He began as director of the NCA in 2015, and got reappointed.  In recent years, as an expert in the field of competition law, he regularly attends public consultations, workshops and seminars. During his mandate, among other activities, he also strengthened and actively participated in the field of Public Procurement and, reorganized and accelerated decision-making processes, and introduced many good practices in the field of competition protection. 

Giorgio Monti

Giorgio Monti is Professor of Competition Law at the Tilburg University and research fellow at the Center for Regulation in Europe. He has taught at the London School of Economics and the European University Institute. As scientific director of the Florence Competition Programme he helped devise a judicial training programme, which attracts judges from all EU Member States and has been running for more than ten years. He has provided policy reports on a number of EU initiatives, including the Geo-Blocking Regulation, the Digital Markets Act and the Data Act. He is the co-author of one of the leading student books on EU Law and a joint editor of one of the principal journals in the field: the Common Market Law Review.

Kamil Nejezchleb

Kamil Nejezchleb is the acting Vice-chairman of Czech Competition authority responsible for the Competition Division since 1 April 2021 with more than fifteen years of experience in competition law and economics. He has two master's degrees in law and economics and Ph.D in Law. He is active within the European Competition Network and International Competition Network. 

He published several expert articles on competition. He is the co-author of the publication Economic Methods in Competition Law. He regularly gives lectures regarding competition law and economics at universities and participates at various conferences related to protection of competition as a speaker.

Jasminka Pecotić Kaufman

Jasminka Pecotić Kaufman is a Professor of Law at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics and Business. Her research focuses on the challenges of enforcing competition rules in European post socialist countries. Prof. Pecotić Kaufman’s work has appeared in the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, the World Competition Law and Economics Review, and the Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies. She was awarded the Jean Monnet Fellowship at the European University Institute for 2023/2024. Her article “Judicial Interpretation and Competition Rules: Excessively Stringent Standard of Proof as a Threat for Effectiveness of Competition Law” has been shortlisted for the 2023 Antitrust Writing Awards. Prof. Pecotić Kaufman is the founder of the Šoljan Competition Law and Policy Conference series. 

Siniša Petrović

Siniša Petrović is a tenured professor of law, Faculty of Law University of Zagreb. He teaches Company Law, Competition Law, and Sports Law. Published more than 130 papers and books. Former vice-president of the Croatian Competition Council. From 2012 to 2016 he was the special adviser to the Prime-minister for European law. Currently, he is, inter alia, an arbitrator on the List of arbitrators (general list) of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS-CAS) and Chair of the UNCITRAL Working group I for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. 

María Pilar Canedo

María Pilar Canedo joined the School of Law of the University of Deusto in 1998. She obtained her doctoral degree with Honors in European competition law at the University of Deusto in cooperation with the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. She is Professor of Private International Law and International Trade at Deusto University and was Visiting Professor at European, American and Asian Universities. She holds a Jean Monnet Chair in Transnational Trade Law and has been recognized three "research periods" ('sexenios') by the Spanish CNEAI (2002-2007), (2008-2015) and (2016-2021). She is on leave at the University as Member of the Board of the Spanish National Commission on Markets and Competition since July 2017. From 2010 to 2017 she was a member and the President of the Basque Antitrust Authority. In June 2023, she will begin directing the RCC-GVH as senior expert of Competition of the OECD. 

Martina Prpić

Martina Prpić is qualified Croatian attorney at law with 20 years of experience and founding partner of Kovačević Prpić Simeunović Law Firm LLC. Martina holds a summa cum laude law degree from the University of Zagreb as well as an LL.M. degree from the Central European University. Her core practice areas are corporate and commercial, banking and finance, competition, capital markets and arbitration. She regularly advises clients on various issues of business law and represents clients in court, arbitration and administrative proceedings. Martina has worked on numerous financing projects for international banks and financial institutions. Martina has been a team leader advising major international investors during their entry in the Croatian market, with special focus on related takeover and competition issues. She participated in a number of transactions for acquiring large and medium large businesses in energy, pharmaceutical, music, food processing and other sectors. Martina has advised and represented clients in takeover proceedings, merger control notifications and other matters of competition and capital markets. 

Mariya Serafimova

Mariya Serafimova is a Legal assistant to the German Advocate General Juliane Kokott at the Court of Justice of the European Union. She is a German qualified lawyer and writes a doctoral thesis on EU competition law at the European University Viadrina in Germany. Formerly, she was an associate at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP in Berlin as a member of the antitrust, competition and trade practice group. Since 2022, she teaches as an external lecturer at the Berlin University of Economics and Law in the field of EU competition law and State aid. 

Miguel Sousa Ferro

Miguel Sousa Ferro is a Professor at the University of Lisbon Law School, where he lectures courses in EU, Competition and Economic Law. He has a PhD from the University of Lisbon and an LL.M from the College of Europe. His most recent books include “The EU Antitrust Damages Directive: Transposition in the Member States” (Oxford University Press), “Market Definition in EU Competition Law” (Edward Elgar) and the soon to be published “Research Handbook on Competition Law Private Enforcement in the EU” (Edward Elgar). He is Managing Partner at Milberg Sousa Ferro and has been practicing law for 18 years. He is acting for claimants in over 20 opt-out consumer collective redress cases in Portugal. 

Alexandr Svetlicinii

Alexandr Svetlicinii is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Macau, where he also serves as Programme Coordinator for the Master of International Business Law in English Language and Academic Staff Advisor at the Centre for Teaching and Learning Enhancement. His focus research areas are in the fields of competition law and international economic law, including commercial dispute settlement. Prof. Svetlicinii currently serves as co-director of the South East Europe chapter of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA). His recent monograph Chinese State Owned Enterprises and EU Merger Control (Routledge, 2021) discusses regulatory challenges faced by the competition authorities in the assessment of economic concentrations involving state owned enterprises. 

Ana Vlahek

Dr. Ana Vlahek is Associate Professor for Civil and Commercial Law and Associate Professor of European Law at University of Ljubljana Faculty of Law. Her major interests are EU law, competition law and collective redress. Within competition law, she has specialized in antitrust private enforcement and cooperation between the national courts and competition authorities. She is a co-author of Competition Law in Slovenia (Wolters Kluwer, 2016 and 2019) as well as the Commentary on the Slovenian Competition Act (GV, 2008). She has been involved in the process of implementing Directive 2014/104 in the Slovenian Competition Act, and co-authored the 2017 Slovenian Collective Actions Act. She has been active within several competition law projects, including several European Commission’s projects on Education and Training of National Judges in the Field of EU Competition Law and the ECN+ Beyond project. Her main focus currently is on collective actions proceedings and the implementation of Directive 2020/1828 in Slovenia.