Aoife Monaghan

Aoife is a managing associate in the Antitrust and Foreign Investment Group at Linklaters LLP. She has experience across all aspects of antitrust matters, particularly global merger control, Article 101 / 102 and competition litigation, in sectors including the tech, financial infrastructure, energy, and music industries. Recently her practice has also focussed on the intersection of antitrust law and climate and sustainability co-operation. Experience also includes a nine-month secondment to the Competition and Markets Authority's Legal Service working on a broad range of matters, and substantial time in a number of Linklaters’ European offices (particularly Dusseldorf and Dublin).

Aoife undertook a full time competition law secondment to the group legal team at BP plc from September 2014 to March 2015 and otherwise has previous experience as a trainee solicitor in Corporate and Dispute Resolution from March 2014 to March 2016, being seconded to Linklaters' Hong Kong office from September 2015 to March 2016.

She is part of the Innovation and Efficiency Initiative within Linklaters’ Global Antitrust Practice, aiming to constantly improve the services we can offer, whether by creating new innovative legal tech solutions or by driving efficiency in everything we do.

Work highlights

Aoife's Linklaters experience includes advising:

• Sony Interactive Entertainment: advising on the opt-out class action in relation to the Playstation store

• Deutsche Börse: advising on the planned €21bn merger with the London Stock Exchange.

• E.ON: advising on the €43bn asset swap with RWE, involving remedies by the European Commission.

• Quantile: advising on the acquisition by the London Stock Exchange Group (a rare CMA Phase 2 unconditional clearance)

• G4S: advising on its recommended £3.8bn cash offer by Allied Universal and its defence against the hostile £3.68bn cash offer by Garda World Security Corporation

• JD Sports: advising in relation to the CMA’s investigation into the supply of Ranges and Leicester replica football kit, in relation to which JD Sports was a successful leniency applicant

• Advising in relation to a number of UK market studies, including mobile ecosystems, music streaming and infant formula, as well as parallel EU / UK sector reviews into AI

Aoife joined Linklaters in 2014 as a trainee solicitor, spending time in the competition/antitrust, dispute resolution, and corporate practices. In 2020 she was promoted to Managing Associate. Aoife has spent time in the Linklaters’ Beijing, Hong Kong and Düsseldorf offices, as well as with the competition team at Allens Linklaters in Sydney.

Aoife spent six months seconded to the Legal Service of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) from November 2019 to July 2020 and in 2014 to 2015 Aoife, as a trainee solicitor, undertook a six-month in-house secondment to BP’s Competition legal team in London.

Aoife graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge in 2012 with a BA in Law. Aoife also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Competition Law from Kings College, London.

Aoife has contributed to a number of articles with co-workers, including

"Blockchain Collaborations: Analysing the potential antitrust implications", Competition Law Insight, 13 May, 2020; and

“Let’s cut to the Race: Antitrust and Sustainability Initiatives”, Linklaters Linking Competition Blog, 20 December 2022.