Jeremy Scholes (Consultant)

Director of Competition Law

Jeremy has since 1998 been a consultant and the director of competition law within the Commercial Group. He has a Cambridge law degree and a postgraduate degree in EC law from the Collège d’Europe in Belgium. He qualified at what is now the London office of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, and was for several years a partner in Eversheds (where he set up and led the competition law practice group in the UK). As well as his work at Walker Morris, he teaches competition law at The City Law School at The City University, London, and is visiting professor in the Université Nancy II in eastern France. He works in French as well as English, and speaks good German.

He has over 25 years’ experience of all aspects of competition law (corporate transactions, litigation, dealing with regulatory authorities (investigations, complaints, etc.), advisory work and compliance and in-house training) across a wide range of sectors.

For example: he advised in the test case which led to the abolition in 2000 of the Solicitors’ Indemnity Fund monopoly (for solicitors’ compulsory professional indemnity insurance), has significant experience of lobbying in the EU institutions, regularly advises RDAs and local authorities on state aids matters, has been/is actively involved in the main OFT cartel investigations of recent years (independent schools; bid-rigging in the construction industry; supermarkets/suppliers), and in the last few years has represented main parties and third parties (competitors, customers, suppliers) in five Competition Commission sectoral and merger inquiries.

He is recognised in the Legal 500 as an expert in competition law, and has been treated in High Court detailed costs proceedings as the equivalent of a QC.

He is the co-author of the standard reference work on commercial agency in English law (Saintier and Scholes, Commercial Agents and the Law (Lloyd’s of London Press, 2005)). This was heavily relied upon by the House of Lords in the judgment in the leading case on the subject, Lonsdale (Agencies) v. Howard & Hallam Ltd. [2007] UKHL 32. He has recently accepted an invitation to become a contributor to the leading competition law reference work Butterworths Competition Law, where he has taken over the section on permitted co-operation between competitors.