Speakers

Jenna Bernstein is an Investigator in the Credit, Fair Trading, and Competition Branch of the Commerce Commission. She works across a wide range of topics including the Electricity Risk Management Review. Jenna has a background in law and economics and has worked across these fields at The Treasury, Russell McVeagh, and Webb Henderson. She is passionate about competition law and promoting consumer welfare, including in the pharmaceutical sector. Jenna has a keen interest in social economics, including gender and developmental economics, and spent years tutoring these papers while enrolled at the University of Auckland.

David Blacktop is a Partner at A&B Competition Lawyers. Over the last 20+ years David has worked on most of the major competition law cases and law reforms that have shaped New Zealand's competition law. David started his career at Bell Gully, before spending five years as Principal Counsel, Competition at the Commerce Commission where he was responsible for the advice provided to the Commission on competition law matters. In 2017, David established his own specialist competition law practice, before David and Neil Anderson started A&B Competition Lawyers in 2021. While he was at the Commerce Commission, David played a leading role in drafting the 2013 updates of the Commerce Commission’s Mergers and Acquisitions Guidelines and Authorisation Guidelines and was responsible for the initial drafting of the Competitor Collaboration Guidelines, which explained the Commission’s (then) proposed approach to New Zealand’s new cartel laws.

Andrew Christopher heads Webb Henderson Competition and Disputes practice and has practiced for over 30 years in the areas of competition and consumer law, corporate regulation and litigation. Andrew regularly represents Commonwealth and State agencies, including the ACCC and ASIC in investigations and court proceedings as well as a wide range of businesses and company directors. Andrew holds an LLM from Sydney University and B. Juris and LLB degrees from the University of New South Wales. Andrew lectured in competition and trade practices law at UNSW for several years and has contributed to leading texts, written dozens of journal articles and is a Section Editor of the Australian Journal of Competition and Consumer law; a contributing editor of the LexisNexis Practical Guide to Competition Law and has been a member (and sometime Chair) of the Advertising Standards Industry Jury.

Victoria is a regulatory lawyer in Webb Henderson’s Auckland office. Victoria conducts regulatory litigation and provides advice on a range of competition and consumer issues with a particular expertise in matters regulated by the Commerce Commission. She also assists clients in their interactions with regulators. Before joining Webb Henderson, Victoria worked at a large Auckland litigation firm conducting civil proceedings and regulatory prosecutions for the Commerce Commission. She has acted as lead or junior counsel in District Court and High Court proceedings under the Commerce Act 1986, Fair Trading Act 1986 and the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003. Prior to moving to New Zealand, Victoria was in practice as a barrister in England and Wales where she had a mixed litigation practice, including criminal prosecutions and civil litigation. Victoria has been working in the legal profession since graduating from her LLB in 2010. She was admitted to the bar in England and Wales in 2012 and was admitted in New Zealand in 2018.

Dr Mark Giancaspro is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide Law School and Special Counsel with DW Fox Tucker Lawyers. He holds an honours degree in Laws and Legal Practice from Flinders University and a PhD from the University of Adelaide. His teaching and research expertise are in contract law, competition and consumer law, and sports law, and he has published widely on matters including issues with the formation and renegotiation of contracts, consumer protection, and smart contracts. He provides training and advice to domestic and international commercial law firms, industry bodies and governments, and is a member of the Law Council of Australia (Business Law Section, Digital Commerce Committee and Competition and Consumer Committee), the ACCC’s Small Business & Franchising Consultative Committee, and the International Association of Consumer Law. He is Co-Director of the Adelaide Law School’s Research Unit on the Regulation of Commerce, Corporations, Insolvency and Taxation (ROCCIT).

Helen is a Senior Solicitor in the Government, Competition and Regulation team at Russell McVeagh. She regularly advises clients subject to regulatory frameworks on a wide variety of matters, including government engagement strategies, submissions on law reform and governance and compliance issues. Helen began her career at Russell McVeagh and returned to the firm after spending more than a decade living in France.

Michael Tilley is a senior competition lawyer and founder of tilley+co, a specialist competition law firm that works across the full spectrum of competition law matters, and prior to that was Chief Legal Counsel, Competition, and Head of Mergers at the Commerce Commission. Michael has spent the vast majority of his 20+ year career in and around merger control, working in the merger teams at the ACCC, UK OFT (now CMA) and the Commerce Commission, and in private practice in London and Auckland. Notable mergers that Michael has worked on include Google/DoubleClick, Vodafone/Sky, Mercury/Trustpower and Ampol/Z. Michael is passionate about merger control process procedure. During his time as Head of Mergers the team implemented a series of process changes to deal with the merger boom of 2021/22, where the Commission processed over double its normal workload of clearance applications. While at the Commission Michael also led team that developed the Commission’s template divestment undertaking.

Lucy Wright is a solicitor in the competition law team at Webb Henderson, where she works closely with senior colleagues across a range of advisory and litigation matters. Her recent work includes litigation in the Part 4 regulatory space and in private anti-competitive conduct proceedings. Lucy also contributes to merger and advisory work for major New Zealand corporates. She holds a LLB and BA in Sociology from the University of Canterbury and spent part of her final year studying international and European law in the Netherlands. Lucy has a strong interest in how competition law intersects with broader economic and social policy.