Geradin Partners has recruited a team led by two partners to open in Helsinki, marking the third office launch this year for the Brussels-based competition law specialist.

Partner Mikko Alkio has joined from Finnish firm Roschier for the launch alongside counsel Lasse Nordström and a team of associates and advisors. They are joined by partner Christian Wik, who practised at Roschier until last year. 

Geradin Partners, which was founded in 2015 by former Covington & Burling partner Damien Geradin, also opened in Paris and Amsterdam earlier this year and now has five offices across Europe, including the London base it launched in 2021. The firm focuses on digital regulation and competition law litigation as well as competition law matters such as merger control and investigations. 

Geradin said the Helsinki office would act as the firm’s Nordic hub, as it plans to work with international companies in the broader region. 

“Finland hosts many leading corporations in the industries that we target, and Mikko, Christian and Lasse are perfect hires because they are not only great lawyers, they also share our values and ambitions,” Geradin said. 

Alkio has joined Geradin Partners after a two-year stint at Roschier, before which he spent more than a decade as a partner at Finnish firm Avance Attorneys. Ranked Band 1 by Chambers and Partners for competition/European law, he is particularly strong in state aid mandates and earlier in his career held a number of advisory positions in government, including in the Finnish prime minister’s office and the Finnish EU commissioner’s cabinet. 

Over the past few years Alkio has been working especially with clients in the technology, media, healthcare, food, energy, gambling, banking and insurance sectors, Geradin Partners said. 

Meantime Wik has nearly four decades of experience in competition law at firms in Finland and the EU. He started and led the practice as a partner at Roschier for about three decades until last year, when he joined business law boutique Edelle Attorneys as a senior legal advisor. 

Geradin Partners said the Helsinki lawyers had joined with a mandate to build a top-notch competition, technology and regulatory team. Their hire expands the firm’s ranks to 10 partners, according to its website, alongside a wider team of 17 lawyers and business support staff.  

The firm is making a habit of picking up top local talent to open offices, hiring former EU official and competition litigator Marc Barennes for its Paris launch in April and Band 2-ranked partner Ruben Elkerbout, who has extensive experience with antitrust investigations and merger control proceedings before competition authorities, from Dutch independent Stek to open in Amsterdam in January. 

Ahead of opening in London three years ago the firm also hired Tom Smith from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), where he was legal director. A former Hogan Lovells lawyer, Smith had led the legal team on the CMA’s Digital Markets Taskforce, which was set up by the UK government to advise it on the new regulatory regime for ‘digital gatekeepers’ such as Google, Apple and Amazon. 

Wik commented: “For a long time, I have wanted to see a devoted pan-European group of experts in this field in the legal market. Geradin Partners is exactly that and the first of its kind, offering pan-European capabilities in competition law and related litigation as well as regulatory and sector-specific matters.”