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Anna Mitchell

Antitrust & Foreign Investment Partner, London

“I advise clients on a broad range of antitrust issues, with a focus on complex UK merger control, multijurisdictional merger control and foreign direct investment, compliance work and market studies. Having worked in our London and Hong Kong offices, and undertaken an in-house client secondment, I have developed a rounded practice and am well placed to offer clients practical solutions to their varying antitrust needs”

Overview

Professional experience

Education and qualifications

Published works

Overview

Anna is a Partner in our Global Antitrust & Foreign Investment Group, based in London. She has over 14 years’ experience advising clients on a range of complex competition and FDI 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 has been named as a “Next Generation Partner” for Competition in the last four consecutive editions of Legal 500 and has also been recognised as one of W@Competition “Shining Stars in Antitrust” for 2023 and Global Competition Review’s “40 under 40” for Foreign Investment Control 2023. 

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
  • Takeda on its $62 billion acquisition of Shire plc – the largest ever international M&A transaction undertaken by a Japanese company
  • Caesars Entertainment Inc. on its acquisition of William Hill plc, and the related sale of the William Hill international and online business to 888 
  • Amec Foster Wheeler plc on its £2.2 billion acquisition by John Wood Group plc, which involved a UK CMA filing amongst numerous others
  • Carrier Global Corporation on the FDI aspects of its $3.1 billion sale of Chubb to APi, involving several complex FDI filings 
  • A “Big 4” audit company on the CMA’s market study into the statutory audit market
  • A respondent in the first dawn raid to be undertaken by the Hong Kong Competition Commission

Professional experience

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.

In addition, Anna is a regular speaker at conferences and has had several articles published. 

Outside of work, Anna is a Board member of children’s air ambulance charity, Lia’s Wings. 

Education and qualifications

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.

Published works

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

  • “Regulatory and antitrust issues for financial sponsors to be aware of”, Law360, May 2023
  • “Balmoral Tanks Information Exchange: The Curious Case of Schrödinger’s Cat?”, Competition Law Insight, March 2019  
  • “Changing the guidelines: competition law enforcement in Singapore”, Competition Law Insight, January 2016
  • “Hong Kong’s Competition Ordinance Assessed”, IFLR, December 2015
  • “Exclusions and Exemptions Under the Hong Kong Competition Ordinance”, October 2015