Antonio Bavasso is co-head of Allen & Overy LLP’s global antitrust practice. He advises on all aspects of antitrust law, practising primarily in London and Brussels.
Over the years Antonio has worked on a number of precedent-setting merger and behavioural investigations as well as regulatory and antitrust litigation. These include advising News Corp on the two-to-one merger that created Sky Italia and on the controversial regulatory aspects of its proposed acquisition of Sky (then BSkyB); Sky on various matters including the acquisition of a stake in ITV (and following litigation up to the Court of Appeal), as well as on the UK litigation on use of foreign decoder cards; WPP on its acquisitions of Grey and TNS; 20th Century Fox on the European Commission (EC) investigations on use of MFN clauses and digital deployment agreements; the CC reference on supply of movies to pay-TV; the acquisition of EMI's music publishing business by the Sony-led consortium; Paddy Power’s merger with Betfair; Orange Austria on the merger with Hutchison which was cleared by the EC following a Phase II review; Veon (formerly VimpelCom) and Wind on their four-to-three mobile merger with H3G in Italy which was conditionally cleared by the EC; and 21st Century Fox on its £27.7 billion takeover bid for Sky and the subsequent GBP11.6bn sale of its 39% stake in Sky to Comcast. He also advised 21st Century Fox on its US$71 billion acquisition by The Walt Disney Company, one of the largest global M&A deals and Fox Networks Group on the investigation by the EC into alleged anticompetitive behaviour surrounding the acquisition of EU sports rights. He is advising Qatar Petroleum on the EU investigation into alleged territorial restrictions of liquefied natural gas (LNG) into Europe.
Education:
JD summa cum laude from the University of Florence
Ph.D. from the University of London (UCL)
Antonio is dual-qualified in the UK and Italy and has practised in San Francisco. He is a co-founder and director of the UCL’s Jevons Institute. He has published widely and is a co-editor of Competition Policy International and consultant editor of Butterworths Competition Law Handbook.
