Robert is a highly experienced competition economist with over twelve years of experience at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Prior to joining Oxera, he served as Director of Economics at the CMA, where he had an influential role in advising decision-makers on the economics of high-profile investigations by boiling down complex concepts, identifying the dial-turning issues, and pulling together the data and evidence to help draw out key insights.

During his CMA career, Robert led on the economic assessments of several pivotal Phase 2 merger cases, including Sainsbury’s/Asda, Microsoft/Activision and Veolia/Suez as well as on a large number of Phase 1 merger reviews. Alongside his expertise in mergers, Robert has experience of leading the economics teams on CMA market reviews, including the Cloud market investigation, the Airwave market investigation, and the PCR testing market review.

As a lead author of the CMA’s Merger Assessment Guidelines in 2021, Robert played a key role in shaping the CMA’s thinking on core competition issues including dynamic competition, market definition, closeness of competition, buyer power, local mergers, uncertainty and counterfactuals, and failing firms.

Robert holds a PhD in Economics from Trinity College Dublin, with a doctoral thesis focused on empirical competition economics, delivering evidence on the impact of competition in the banking sector on the wider economy.