Paul Reeve

Paul is a Partner in RBB’s London office, having joined the firm in 2020. Paul has worked as a competition economist for nearly 20 years, in consultancy, regulators and industry. He has particular expertise in UK merger control, having worked for much of the last decade at the CMA and its predecessor, the CC.

Paul has worked on around 100 UK mergers,and was the lead economist on several Phase 2 cases, most notably BT/EE. He was the head of economics in Phase 1 mergers, leading a team of economists in cases across numerous sectors (see right for a selection of cases).

Paul is a former chair of the CMA’s Mergers Intelligence Committee, responsible for deciding which mergers should be investigated. He also acted as a Director on several merger cases, and led the development of merger policy in several areas including retail mergers. He was the primary author of the CMA’s Rail Franchise Merger Guidance.

Paul has particular experience in broadcasting and telecommunications, and was a Director of Economics at Ofcom, the UK regulator. He is also an expert in energy, having led several workstreams in the CMA’s energy market investigation and worked on the SSE/Npower merger.

Paul also has experience of the client side of the process from 3 years in-house at Sky, during which he worked on the BSkyB/ITV merger, Ofcom’s Pay TV Review, and various other competition matters.

Earlier in his career, Paul worked for a different economic consultancy on mergers and other matters across jurisdictions including the UK, the EU and South Africa.

He holds a degree in PPE, and an M.Phil in Economics, from Oxford University, where he also taught undergraduate economic courses.