John Schmidt

Partner at Arnold & Porter

Speaker

John Schmidt leads the UK Competition team in London. He has over 25 years of experience dealing with competition authorities and courts in the UK and the EU. He regularly advises on complex competition conduct issues, investigations, litigation, and merger cases with a particular sector focus on the life sciences, consumer goods, and TMT. He is dual-qualified in the UK and Germany with full rights of audience before the European Court of Justice.

John has extensive experience advising pharmaceutical and medical device companies on pricing matters, including a number of reverse payment patent settlement cases both at the EU and UK level as well as investigations into excessive pricing and restrictive agreements in the pharma sector. He also advises on parallel trade and supply chain design, as well as challenging public procurement tenders on behalf of his clients.

Within the retail and consumer goods space, John regularly advises clients on pricing and distribution issues as well as online strategies. He has represented retailers and suppliers in UK vertical pricing investigations.

In merger control, John obtains merger clearances from the UK’s Competition and Market Authority and the European Commission and coordinates strategy for multijurisdictional merger clearances in the rest of the world. In parallel John and his team also obtain Foreign Direct Investment/national security clearances in the UK, various EU member states and worldwide.

John has in-depth experience representing clients on complex competition litigation and has also acted in follow-on damages actions before the Competition Appeal Tribunal. He is currently representing various stand-alone claimants for damages arising out of the EU trucks cartel in large individual claims in the Dutch and UK courts.

John has been consistently ranked as a leading lawyer by Chambers UK ("very knowledgeable, easy to work with and adept at explaining complicated issues."), Chambers Europe, and Chambers Global, as well as The Legal 500.