Pierre Kirch is a partner with Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker (Europe) LLP, www.paulhastings.com, and divides his time between the firm's offices in Paris and Brussels. His practice is devoted to the whole range of French and EU competition/antitrust law (including State aid), which he has practiced now for some 20 years. He is recognized as one of the world’s leading individual practitioners in the competition/antitrust field for France by publications such as Chambers Global 2007 (Chambers Europe 2007, the Guide to the World’s Leading Competition and Antitrust Lawyers, The European Legal 500 and the French review, Décideurs Stratégie Finance.
His representations span diverse disciplines and industries. Recent EU representations
include the “Le Levant” State aid case, and obtaining in 2006, following more than four years of procedure before the Court of First Instance, annulment, on behalf of 281 French companies and 256 private investors as plaintiffs, of a European Commission recovery decision targeting them. In recent years, he has prepared, filed and negotiated a significant number of merger notifications before the European Commission on behalf of various multinationals including, inter alia, Société Générale, Sodexho and Lehman Brothers. He has represented clients before the European Commission and France’s Competition Authority in cartel and abuse of dominant position cases
in sectors as divers as chemical distribution, sugar, meal vouchers and professional motorcycle racing. He is currently advising one the multinationals targeted by the European Commission in the worldwide TFT – LCD (“Liquid Crystal Display” panels) cartel cases opened by the Commission in December 2006. Recent French representations include KPMG/Salustro Reydel, in which he first obtained phase I clearance of KPMG France’s acquisition of a major independent competitor and then successfully represented KPMG in defense of French governmental approval in appeal proceedings brought by a competitor before France’s Conseil d’Etat (favorable ruling of 30 June 2006).
Mr. Kirch is a graduate of Dartmouth and of the University of Paris Law School (Paris I and Paris II). He is a past president of the Dartmouth Club of France. Mr. Kirch is the immediate past chairman of the EU law section of the Union Internationale des Avocats. He currently serves as rapporteur of AmCham EU’s working group on State aid in Brussels. He is also a founding member of the Editorial Board of the French language quarterly review specialized in
competition law, “Concurrences” (Thomson/Transactive).
Mr. Kirch is a frequent speaker and writer on EU and competition law issues in various fora in Europe and in the United States in particular and in publications such as European Competition Law: A Guide to the EC and its Member States (LexisNexis/Matthew Bender; chapter on France), Merger Control in Europe (Kluwers Law International; chapter on France), Droit européen des
affaires (co-author, Dunod). Every year, he leads a series of specialized seminars on EU competition law for the Executive MBA classes at two leading French business schools, HEC and ESCP-EAP, during their European campus in Brussels.
Mr. Kirch is a member of the Paris and Brussels Bars. Before joining Paul Hastings in 2004, he was a partner at Moquet Borde & Associés. Bilingual in English and French, he also occasionally handles client matters in other languages which he speaks fluently: German, Italian and Spanish.
Mr. Kirch is a contributor to Smit & Herzog on the Law of the European Union*, a LexisNexis publication organized under the auspices of the Center for International Legal Studies (www.cils.org), an Austrian registered (ZVR No. 208672816) non-profit legal research and education organization.
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