Christian Riis-Madsen
Partner
Christian Riis-Madsen is a partner in O’Melveny’s Brussels office and a member of the Antitrust and Competition Practice. He focuses on EU competition law and EU regulatory law. Christian has extensive experience advising major corporations on competition law matters, especially merger control, joint ventures, representing defendants in cartel investigations, and complaints relating to abuse of dominant positions.
For the past several years, Christian successfully represented the complainant, AMD, in the Intel case, culminating with the Commission’s record-breaking EUR 1.06 billion fine imposed on Intel.
Christian has worked on transactions with deal values ranging from US$10 million to US$30 billion and handles notifications to the European Commission (EC), national competition authorities, and coordinates filings in jurisdictions outside of Europe.
Illustrative Professional Experience
EC Merger Control
- Representing Norsk Hydro in the US$30 billion merger of its oil and gas operations with Statoil ASA, the largest merger in the history of Norway
- Representing Norsk Hydro in the unconditional Phase II clearance of its US$1 billion sale of Kerling to INEOS, and in one of the very few “gun-jumping” investigations ever carried out by the EC
- Representing Honeywell International Inc. in multiple acquisitions, including obtaining Phase I clearance subject to remedies for the US$2.4 billion acquisition of UK listed company, Novar plc
- Successfully representing a complainant in merger proceedings leading to the abandonment of the merger
Abuse of Dominance
- Representing Advanced Micro Devices in its Article 82 complaint against Intel, in which the European Commission recently fined Intel a record €1.06 billion (US$1.44 billion) for its anti-competitive practices. This is the largest ever fine imposed by an antitrust regulator
Cartels
- Successfully obtaining the acquittal of Léon van Parys (LVP), the European importer of "Bonita" bananas, in a banana cartel investigation which ultimately led to the imposition of fines amounting to more than EUR 60 million on other banana importers
- GFU cartel investigation – successfully representing two oil companies which were among the 30 companies targeted by the EC's probe into US$160 billion of natural gas supplies from the Norwegian Continental Shelf
- Rolling Stock Components - representing a multinational manufacturer of rolling stock components in relation to the EC investigation into alleged bid rigging of supplies to national rail companies. The EC investigation was closed prior to the issuance of a Statement of Objections
Professional Activities
Member, Advokatsamfundet, Brussels Bar
Co-Author, "Antitrust Risk: Three Resale Price Maintenance Cases in Germany in Six Months," European Antitrust and Competition Alert (October 2009); "Towards a European Energy Community?,"
European Antitrust Review 2010, published by
Global Competition Review (2009); "EC Competition Law: An Overview of the Major Developments of 2008 and Expected Future Trends For 2009 and Beyond," European Antitrust and Competition Alert (March 2009); "Heightened Antitrust Risk in the EU: Restriction of Parallel Imports," European Antitrust and Competition Alert, (March 2009); "A New Energy Era in the European Union,"
European Antitrust Review 2009, published by
Global Competition Review (2008); “EU Energy,”
GCR European Antitrust Review (2007-08); “Strengthened Cartel Enforcement in the EU,” IBA Competition Law International (2006); “Multi-jurisdictional Merger Control,” PLC Cross-Border Competition Handbook (2005/06)
Speaker, "Effective Document Collection/Legal Hold Protocols," The International Quality and Productivity Centre's Information Retention & E-Disclosure Management Exchange 2009, Brussels, Belgium (2009); "Enhancing Deterrence in Competition Law, Compliance Programmes, and Reduction in Fines," Competition Law Scholars Forum Workshop, Strathclyde University Law School, Glasgow (2007)
Languages, Danish; English; French; German; Norwegian; Swedish