William Leslie

Will is a Partner in the Antitrust & Foreign Investment Group in Brussels and co-heads the firm’s technology sector team. He is also co-chair of BritCham EU’s competition section.

He advises multinational corporates on EU and UK competition law. He has a particular focus on merger control as well as antitrust investigations and litigation. Will is a member of the Brussels Bar (A list), as well as being qualified as a solicitor (England and Wales). He has worked in Brussels, London and Paris.

Will regularly publishes and speaks on competition law topics and won this year’s Concurrences Jury Award for Best Business Article on Unilateral Conduct.

Work highlights

• Advising a consortium of telecommunication providers on the antitrust and foreign investment aspects of forming Aduna, a platform with Ericsson for the development and roll-out of network APIs 
• Acting for one of the largest global companies before the EU General Court in its application for annulment of a Commission Decision and fine for alleged abuse of dominance
• Acting for Kelkoo in its response to Alphabet’s appeal before the Court of Justice of the European Union in relation to the European Commission’s Google Shopping decision for abuse of dominance
• Advising Intel on the global merger control proceedings for the sale of its NAND and SSD business to SK Hynix
• Advising Vodafone on the European Commission’s parallel antitrust and merger control investigations into its network sharing arrangements with Telecom Italia, including the merger of its passive tower infrastructure in Italy into INWIT
• Abuse of Dominance Investigations (Exclusivity): advising a multinational corporate in relation to investigations by authorities in the EU into alleged abuse of dominance as well as the subsequent appeals processes

Will holds an M.A. history and an M.Phil. in international relations from Cambridge University as well as a master’s in EU competition law from King’s College, London.

Will regularly publishes on competition law. Recent examples include:

Christian Ahlborn, Gerwin van Gerven and Will Leslie “Bronner revisited: Google Shopping and the Resurrection of Discrimination Under Article 102 TFEU” JECLAP, Volume 13, Issue 2, 2022

Gerwin van Gerven, Annamaria Mangiaracina, Will Leslie, Lodewick Prompers, “Data and privacy in EU Merger Control” in GCR’s Digital Markets Guide - First Edition (2021)

Christian Ahlborn and Will Leslie, '“Jack of all trades, master of none”: the ever-increasing ambit of the market investigation regime’ in A. MacCulloch, B. Rodger and P. Whelan (eds), The UK Competition Regime: A Twenty-Year Retrospective (OUP: 2021)