Image of Anne Wachsmann

Anne Wachsmann

Antitrust & Foreign Investment Partner, Paris

“I advise on all dimensions of competition law, offering clients in-depth knowledge, extensive experience and well developed relationships with regulators to ensure resolution of complex and business-critical competition matters. I am a skilled negotiator and focus on achieving the best results for clients.”

Overview

Professional experience

Education and qualifications

Overview

Anne is widely acknowledged for her leading expertise in competition law. She advises on cartels, abuse of dominant position, vertical restraints and merger control, from the administrative investigation stage to the procedure before domestic and EU jurisdictions, as well as antitrust follow-on actions.
 
Anne’s experience spans many sectors, notably the automotive and pharmaceutical sectors. Anne co-leads the firm’s consumer sector. She is a member of the Corporate Responsibility Commitee.
 
Earlier in her career, Anne was based in Brussels, where she gained significant insight into the operation of the European Commission and developed extensive contacts with competition regulators.
 
Work highlights
Anne has been involved in several landmark French cartel decisions as well as the EU airfreight case. Other cases including advising:

 

  • Tarkett on the French Competition Authority’s cartel investigation in the resilient flooring sector, which led to the Authority’s decision of 2017 imposing the highest total fine since 2015 (€ 302 million). This was the first major cartel case in which the new settlement procedure was applied
  • Peugeot on its acquisition of Opel, leading the EU and multijurisdictional merger control processes in 2017
  • Sanofi on its asset swap with Boehringer Ingelheim encompassing worldwide activities, involving EU (phase I clearance with commitments) and multijurisdictional merger control filings in 2016
  • Peugeot and Gefco on the investigation leading to the delivery services decision of 15 December 2015
  • Beiersdorf on the body care sector investigation, which led to global fines of approximately €1bn
  • Air France-KLM on the freight investigation launched in 2006, heading a team of lawyers in charge of the case before the competition authorities in Europe, the U.S., Asia and Africa in addition to private actions. In an unprecedented decision of 16 December 2015, the European Commission decision of 2010 was annulled by the EU General Court. On 17 March 2017, the EU Commission readopted its decision, which has been appealed
  • Intermarché, Tereos, Adecco, LG Electronics, Microsoft and other international groups on a range of competition issues

Professional experience

Anne is ranked in band 1 by Chambers Europe and among the leading individuals for competition matters in France by Legal 500. She has been nominated for consecutive terms by the French Competition Authority as a non-governmental adviser in the framework of the ICN (International Competition Network). She is also a member of the Comité de Pilotage des Ateliers de la DGCCRF, the consumer and competition branch of the Ministry for the Economy, which holds regular conferences on consumer and competition law topics. 

Anne is a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, where she teaches on EU merger control.

Anne chairs the Linklaters Foundation in France (La Fondation d’entreprise Linklaters), which was launched in 2015. The foundation focuses on two main areas in line with the firm's values of excellence and creativity: inclusive education, to combat the various forms of exclusion through education, help with job seeking and returning to work, and support for entrepreneurship; and cultural patronage, by helping institutions fund major exhibitions in the field of contemporary art and curating a photography exhibition on show at our premises.

Publications

Anne regularly writes on competition law, including as co-author of a quarterly column in Concurrences and in Les Echos and Le Magazine des Affaires.

Anne’s other articles include:

“Cartel Leniency in France”, Cartel Leniency Global Guide, Thomson Reuters Practical Law, 2017, with Clara Robert-Heidmann

“L’intensification de la reparation des dommages issus des pratiques anticoncurrentielles” (on the impact of EU and French antitrust transaction procedures on follow-on civil damages litigation), Institut de Recherche Juridique de la Sorbonne - André Tunc edition, 2016

“The New Settlement Procedure under French Law”, In-house Counsel World Summit magazine, July 2016

 

Education and qualifications

Anne studied law at the University of Strasbourg and holds a diploma of higher European legal studies from the College of Europe in Bruges. She won first prize at the Conférence du Stage of the Strasbourg Bar in 1993.