Profile description
George Peretz has “an excellent depth of knowledge” (Legal 500, 2013) of competition law in both the United Kingdom and European Union, having practised in the area since 1992. He advises and represents major private clients, regulators and Government departments over the whole field of competition law, including cartels, mergers, Article 102, private actions for damages and injunctions and judicial review. He frequently appears on competition issues before the Competition Appeal Tribunal and other UK courts, as well as the European Court of Justice and General Court. In the past year he led, in the Court of Appeal, a leading pharmaceutical company’s successful defence against an application for an interim injunction under Article 102, in a case raising important and difficult issues as to the correct approach to market definition and abuse in pharma cases (Chemistree v Abbvie ): and he is currently acting for the European Commission in the appeal to the EU General Court against its high-profile Lundbeck and Servier decisions (pay for delay agreements). He has extensive experience of guiding clients through investigations by the Competition and Markets Authority and its predecessors, including complaints, leniency applications, responding to dawn raids and demands for information, preparing responses to Statements of Objections, settlement negotiations and oral representations.
George has very considerable experience in advising and representing public and private sector clients on State aid issues, including appearances in the European Court of Justice and General Court. He is Joint Convenor of the newly formed UK State Aid Law Association (http://uksala.org/).
George also practises extensively in the area of VAT, where he has extensive experience before UK and EU courts, and the First Tier Tribunal. Recent highlights include leading HMRC’s successful appeals to the Court of Appeal and to the Upper Tribunal in different strands of the high-profile Rank case (fiscal neutrality and gaming machines) and his successful appearance for the UK in the ECJ in Case C-651/11 Staatssecretaris van Financiën v X (transfer of a going concern).
George has extensive experience of litigating EU and public law, in a wide variety of other contexts. He has appeared in the Supreme Court, High Court, Court of Appeal and European Court of Justice in leading cases in a range of areas, including pharmaceutical regulation, agricultural law, intellectual property, human rights, free movement, and telecommunications. Recent highlights include his successful appearances for the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in R(Roche Registration Ltd) v MHRA [2015] 1 CMLR 6, for the UK in the ECJ in Case C-500/11 Fruition (agricultural producers organisations), in the Supreme Court for the Treasury in Hemming v City of Westminster (licensing fees and free movement, ongoing), and for the Statistics Board in the High Court on an application for a declaration that UK census legislation was contrary to the ECHR (R oao Ali v Statistics Board [2012] EWHC 1943 (Admin)).
George has frequently acted for both public sector and private clients in the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal on Freedom of Information Act issues, and co-authored the second edition of the Blackstone’s Guide to the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
His range of court experience and advisory work was recently recognised by his re-appointment to the Attorney General’s A panel.
George is a Director of Advocates for International Development (A4ID) and is a part-time Judge of the First-tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber).
