CEG

Compact boutique CEG has offices across Europe and Australia. The consultancy was founded in the UK in 2007 – where global co-head Mark Conaty currently resides – and now also operates in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, which is home to global co-head Nils von Hinten-Reed. In May 2021, the consultancy promoted Fred Wandschneider to director of its German office, while fellow Düsseldorf-based economist Fabian Rinnen was named head of econometrics and data analytics. 

The consultancy advises on some of the most significant antitrust damages cases in Europe, including assisting Sainsbury’s with its bid for damages against Mastercard. The UK’s Supreme Court endorsed CEG’s assessment of pass-on in its judgment of June 2020, finding that the interchange fees were anticompetitive. Also in the UK, CEG advises a large group of claimants that include Veolia and Suez in their follow-on claims against the EU Trucks cartel.

Elsewhere in Europe, the consultancy assisted a major German car manufacturer with its damages calculations related to the Roll-on, Roll-off Shipping cartel. It acts for cash and carry retailer Metro in its follow-on claims against German Sugar cartelists and also assists petrol station chain JET in its bid for damages against German banking associations that were found to have fixed prices for the acceptance of debit cards. On the investigations side, Wandschneider and Rinnen advised a confidential distributor of cables in a cartel probe before Austria’s Federal Cartel Authority, which ultimately ended without any charges against the company. The pair are also assisting a major construction company during the Austrian enforcer’s largest-ever cartel probe into price-fixing in the construction industry.