Veronica Roberts

Partner, UK Regional Head of Practice, Competition, Regulation and Trade

London

Veronica is an EU/UK competition law expert (qualified in the UK and Belgium) and heads our UK competition, regulation and trade practice. In addition, Veronica leads our global Foreign Direct Investment group and is co-lead of the Global TMT Sector team.

Veronica has over two decades of experience working proactively with clients to help them secure merger clearances for acquisitions and joint ventures in the UK, EU and worldwide. She also helps clients to deal effectively with competition and regulatory investigations. Veronica also leads our global Foreign Direct Investment group and has significant experience advising on the applicability of FDI regimes.

Veronica advises clients in a wide range of sectors, with a focus currently on telecoms, media, leisure and consumer products. She has extensive experience of working with the CMA, Ofcom, Ofgem, BEIS and the European Commission.

Veronica is consistently commended for her pragmatic and commercial advice in the major legal directories, including most recently in Legal 500 UK 2023 as "excellent, gives you confidence you are in safe hands, won’t sit on the fence; understands and appreciates the commercial perspective and will try to come up with a solution" and in 2022 as “accessible, knowledgeable, pragmatic and very client friendly. One of the more user-friendly partners in the City and great to partner with on large complex deals“.

She is also a recommended lawyer in Who’s Who Legal for both Competition and Foreign Investment Review, a Thomson Reuters Stand-out Lawyer, and was ranked in the top 5 EMEA Antitrust Lawyers in MergerLinks 2021 Dealmaker league tables.

Background

Based in our London office now, Veronica has 8 years of experience in our Brussels office.

Experience & expertise

Selected matters

Bharti Group on its acquisition of the satellite company OneWeb jointly with the UK government, including obtaining merger and FDI clearances, and subsequent investments by SoftBank and Eutelsat
National Grid on the merger control issues associated with its £7.8 billion acquisition of Western Power Distribution, obtaining unconditional Phase 1 approval
Pearson on the merger control aspects of the sale of its local K12 Courseware businesses in Italy and Germany to Sanoma Corporation
Telefónica SA on the European Commission's Phase II investigation into the £10.25 billion sale of its UK mobile business (O2) to Hutchison Whampoa (the owner of Three in the UK)
MoneySupermarket.com on the CMA's review and clearance of its acquisition of Decision Tech, its joint venture with Icelolly and general competition compliance advice.