Morten Nissen

I'm a partner and co-head of our international Competition & EU group. I also lead the Competition & EU team in Denmark. I have a particular focus on applying competition & EU law as a tool to achieve specific and measurable business objectives for our clients.

Competition authorities act differently in different countries. I have solid international experience and an outlook based on working for more than 12 years as a lawyer based in Brussels, which includes doing a number of fascinating competition cases in many countries across Europe as well as Asia. This first-hand experience helps me better navigate cases to obtain results that make a difference.

My primary focus is on state aid, competition restricting agreements, and abuse of dominance. I have made numerous EU and national merger control notifications, and I am always focused on optimising the business outcome and delivering competitive advantage. I am proud to say I have been involved in a high number of cases that made new case law. My sector experience is particularly strong in the pharmaceutical, copyright, media, IT, telecoms, passenger transport and international payment systems sectors.

Over the years, I have represented clients in a large number of legal procedures before the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Amongst these, I have won four appeal cases against the EU Commission, including a state aid case before the Grand Chamber of the EU court of justice which ultimately led to the EU Commission's Legal Service turning around and choosing me to represent the Commission in a number of other state aid cases.

Until 2012, I was a partner in our Brussels office. I left Bird & Bird to start a pharmaceutical business and other start-ups. After this, I was Of Counsel at a leading Danish firm, before finding my way home back to Bird & Bird in 2018. At Bird & Bird, I benefit from a truly international set-up and I have a personal network that allows me to know exactly who is well placed to handle a particular case in one of our many offices around the word. It particularly allows me to pull in points of view from a high-quality pool of 65 competition lawyers around the world.

I'm a member of the World Competition, Law and Economics Journals Advisory Board (Kluwer) and co-author if 'Guide to EU Pharmaceutical Regulatory Law' (Kluwer).

• I advise on a broad range of competition law cases, from purely advisory over compliance and transactional to acting as third party complainant in larger, strategic competition law cases. There is most often a technology element involved.