Joan de Solà-Morales

Joan is a Partner based in RBB’s Brussels office. He has extensive experience in the economic assessment of mergers, having advised on numerous Phase II investigations before the European Commission, including several of the most high-profile cases of the past decade.

He also works regularly on abuse of dominance cases, horizontal agreements, vertical restraints, and damage estimations, and has given expert testimony before national and arbitration courts on these topics. Joan is recognised in GCR’s 40 under 40 list and has featured in Who’s Who Legal every year since 2017, where he has been described as “one of the rising stars” and “really, really outstanding”.

Joan advises on all aspects of competition economics and policy, and across all sectors of the economy. He works regularly before the European Commission and has advised before a large number of other competition authorities around the world, especially in Europe, Latin-America and Asia.

Joan has particular experience in merger control. He has advised on numerous merger cases, raising horizontal, vertical, and conglomerate concerns. He advises regularly on multi-jurisdictional mergers involving the coordination of economic analysis before multiple competition authorities.

He also works regularly on the economic analysis of Article 102 and 101 cases, both before the European Commission and National Competition Authorities, and on damage estimations, both in Spain and in other EU and non-EU countries.

Joan has acted as an expert witness before various Spanish courts, including the Spanish National Court and the Court of Arbitration of Madrid. He has presented orally on numerous occasions before the European Commission and many other competition authorities around the world.

Joan has published in specialised journals on the economic analysis of mergers and damages, speaks frequently in conferences, and is a professor at the Brussels School of Competition. He is featured in Who’s Who Legal (2017-2023).

He holds an MSc in Competition and Market Regulation from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics and a Master’s degree in Economics from UAB in Barcelona, for which he also studied at UvA in Amsterdam. Before joining RBB Economics, Joan worked at the economics-focused think tank Bruegel, where he was involved in research projects on competition policy and innovation.

Joan speaks English, Spanish, Catalan, and some French.