Frédéric de Bure’s practice focuses on EU and French competition law, including merger control, cartel investigations, market dominance cases and related litigation matters.

Frédéric has advised clients in complex merger control cases before the European Commission and the French Competition Authority, including the Airbus/Safran joint venture and subsequent acquisition of Arianespace, Lagardère/VUP, Danone/Numico, Faurecia/Emcon, and a number of Airbus acquisitions. He has also represented clients in a number of international cartel/dominance investigations including several recent investigations in the technology sector. His litigation experience before the European Courts in Luxembourg and the French courts includes major competition cases such as Lagardère v. Odile Jacob and Danone v. Commission.

Frédéric joined the firm in 2003 and became counsel in 2012 and partner in 2019. From 2003 to 2008, he was resident in the Brussels office.

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Notable Experiences

  • Airbus in a wide range of merger control matters, including the acquisition of the commercial aircraft division of Bombardier and the purchase of Arianespace, Europe’s space launch services provider, by Airbus Safran Launchers (now Arianegroup).

  • Hachette Livre in the context of the European Commission’s investigation into “most favored nation” clauses and Amazon’s e-book distribution deals with various publishers.

  • Google in the context of several abuse of dominance cases before the French Competition Authority and the French Courts.

  • Whirlpool in the context of an investigation of the French Competition Authority into the French major appliances sector.

  • HPE in the context of an abuse of dominance investigation of the French Competition Authority into the maintenance of servers and storage systems.

  • Danone on the EU merger control aspects of its acquisition of Numico, creating the world’s second largest baby food company.

  • Lagardère before the European Court of Justice in the litigation against rival publisher Odile Jacob to secure the acquisition of Vivendi Universal Publishing.

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