Anna Mitchell

Anna is a Partner in our Global Antitrust & Foreign Investment Group, based in London. She has over a decade of experience advising clients on a range of complex competition matters, with particular experience in the technology, healthcare and private equity sectors, and in UK public M&A deals.

Between 2013-2016, Anna was based in our Hong Kong office, specialising in advising domestic and international clients on compliance with emerging competition regimes in the region and on Chinese merger control. Whilst there, Anna worked on several complex Chinese merger control filings, including advising CMA CGM on its acquisition of NOL, which brought together two leading global shipping companies.

Anna was named as a “Next Generation Partner” for Competition in the 2020 and 2021 editions of Legal 500 and also as one of Women@Competition & Parr’s “30 in their 30s” notable female competition lawyers in private practice in 2017. She was also included in Asian Legal Business’ inaugural 2015 list of top “40 under 40” lawyers.

Work highlights

Highlights of recent matters Anna has worked on include advising:

• Just Eat plc on its acquisition of rival UK food ordering marketplace Hungryhouse – a complex Phase II CMA investigation that was cleared without remedies. The deal won the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers’ Award 2018 for the innovative competition law arguments and economic theories used to secure the unconditional clearance
• Just Eat plc on its merger with Takeaway.com to create one of the world’s largest online food delivery platforms
• Takeda on its $62 billion acquisition of Shire plc – the largest ever international M&A transaction undertaken by a Japanese company
• Amec Foster Wheeler plc on its £2.2 billion acquisition by John Wood Group plc, which involved a UK CMA filing amongst numerous others
• a “Big 4” audit company on the CMA’s market study into the statutory audit market
• UBM plc on its £3.8 billion recommended takeover by Informa plc, which involved a number of merger control filings, including a CMA filing in the UK
• a respondent in the first dawn raid to be undertaken by the Hong Kong Competition Commission

Anna co-authored “A Practical Guide to the Hong Kong Competition Ordinance” (published by Sweet & Maxwell in 2016), which was the first text book written on the Hong Kong competition regime.

Anna co-wrote the chapter on ‘Abuse of Dominance and Intellectual Property in China’ in the recently published Competition Law and Intellectual Property in China. Published by Oxford University Press in February 2019.

Anna graduated with First Class honours from the University of Nottingham. She has a Post-Graduate Diploma with Distinction in EU Competition Law from King’s College London.

Anna is a regular speaker at conferences and has had several articles published, including:

• Anna Mitchell, Clara Ingen-Housz and Daren Shiau, “Changing the guidelines: competition law enforcement in Singapore”, Competition Law Insight, January 2016
• Anna Mitchell & Clara Ingen-Housz, “Hong Kong’s Competition Ordinance Assessed”, IFLR, December 2015
• Anna Mitchell, Clara Ingen-Housz & Knut Fournier, “Exclusions and Exemptions Under the Hong Kong Competition Ordinance”, October 2015
• Balmoral Tanks Information Exchange: The Curious Case of Schrödinger’s Cat? Available here