Veronica is an EU/UK competition law expert (qualified in the UK and Belgium) and heads our UK competition, regulation and trade practice. In addition, Veronica leads our global Foreign Direct Investment group and is co-lead of the Global TMT Sector team.
A solicitor advocate, Veronica specialises in EU and UK competition law, and has experience working in Brussels and London. She has over 25 years’ experience dealing effectively with high profile competition investigations and merger/FDI clearances in the UK, EU and worldwide. She regularly advises on competition compliance (including setting up compliance programmes/audits) and strategic behavioural matters. Veronica advises clients in a wide range of sectors, and has extensive experience of working with the CMA, Ofcom, Ofgem, the ISU (and various Government departments) and the European Commission.
Veronica is expert at co-ordinating merger control and FDI filings for cross-border transactions and has secured a number of clearances where commitments have been agreed to deal with competition/national security concerns. Veronica has been involved in a number of the conditional clearances issued to date under the UK's relatively new FDI (NSI) regime. Furthermore, Veronica was the only private practice lawyer to be invited to give evidence to the House of Commons when it was reviewing the first year of the UK’s NSI regime in practice. Veronica is the editor of Global Competition Review’s Foreign Direct Investment Regulation Guide and her chapter on ‘Key Current Trends in FDI: Global Overview’ (from the second edition of the GCR Guide) won a Concurrences Antitrust Writing Award in 2023. Veronica is one of only a few ranked ‘Global Elite Thought Leaders' in England in Lexology Index: Foreign Investment Control 2026 and featured in Financier Worldwide Magazine's 2026 Foreign Investment & National Security Power Players.
Veronica sits on the Legal Committee of UK Private Capital (formerly the BVCA), advising on competition and national security developments. Veronica is consistently commended for her pragmatic and commercial advice in the major legal directories, including most recently in Legal 500 UK 2026, clients describe her as a “Phase II national security filings specialist. She is very well respected in that area; she really is pushing the envelope as a go‑to person on that front.” They also highlight that “Veronica is regarded as one of the leading practitioners in this field.”
Experience & capabilities
Selected matters
- Bharti Group on its acquisition of the satellite company OneWeb jointly with the UK government, including obtaining merger and FDI clearances, and subsequent investments by SoftBank and Eutelsat
- National Grid on the merger control issues associated with its £7.8 billion acquisition of Western Power Distribution, obtaining unconditional Phase 1 approval
- Pearson on the merger control aspects of the sale of its local K12 Courseware businesses in Italy and Germany to Sanoma Corporation
- Telefónica SA on the European Commission's Phase II investigation into the £10.25 billion sale of its UK mobile business (O2) to Hutchison Whampoa (the owner of Three in the UK)
- MoneySupermarket.com on the CMA's review and clearance of its acquisition of Decision Tech, its joint venture with Icelolly and general competition compliance advice.
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