Geradin Partners, a competition law boutique with offices in Brussels and London, has promoted former Competition and Markets Authority lawyer David Gallagher to partner.

Gallagher originally joined the firm as counsel in July 2022 from Harbour Litigation Funding, where he was a director. He previously worked at the CMA, where he spent more than two years as assistant legal director. He trained and qualified at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, giving him a relatively rare combination of regulatory and Magic Circle expertise with litigation funding nous.

His promotion brings the firm’s partnership to five, alongside Tom Smith, who joined as a partner in May 2021, Stijn Huijts, Konstantina Bania and founding partner Damien Geradin. Both Smith and Hilts also held senior roles at the CMA.

Gallagher’s promotion confirms the firm’s continuing strategic shift into UK antitrust litigation, alongside work for clients navigating investigations in this field. Those include probes into alleged cartels, abuse of dominance, vertical and horizontal agreements, as well as market investigations and market studies, among other areas.

The firm also specialises in public antitrust enforcement and digital regulatory work, as well as having experience in cases involving the interface between competition and intellectual property, with Geradin previously recognised for his work on the licensing of standard-essential patents in technology cases.

His firm’s previous clients include O2, while it has represented others in past CMA investigations against Google in the Privacy Sandbox, Ad Tech and PlayStore investigations, and in the Apple App Store investigation.

The firm subsequently launched multi-billion-dollar UK and Netherlands ad tech class actions against Google as well as a billion-dollar App Store class action against Apple in the last year. The promotion will allow Gallagher to deploy both his antitrust and funding expertise as a new partner.

The firm also hired Anthony Ojukwu as counsel, making him the fourth former senior CMA lawyer to join the firm. Ojukwu also trained and qualified at Freshfields, before joining the CMA, rising to assistant director in a three-year stint at the regulator.

Geradin, formerly a partner at Euclid Law, and before that in the Brussels office of Covington & Burling and at Howrey, said the moves presaged further hires following the firm’s shift into class action-based antitrust litigation in the past year.

He said: “David and Anthony are exceptional lawyers with the litigation experience we need to handle complex cases. This is a space in which we have great ambitions and where we will keep investing in the next few months and years.”

Gallagher’s move coincides with the news that one of Geradin’s former colleagues at both Covington and Howrey, Peter Camesasca, had left Covington in Brussels for a second time to set up in sole practice.

Camesasca first worked at Covington for two years between 2010 and 2012, leaving to set up his own firm. He subsequently rejoined Covington in June 2014 for a nine year-stint, before again setting up as a solo lawyer. Covington was approached for comment.