Profile details
About Nicholas Frey
Nicholas advises on competition law, commercial disputes and class actions.
Nicholas heads our London mass claims team and global litigation innovation teams, and co-heads the Global Antitrust Litigation team. He has acted on a number of leading competition/competition damages cases including successfully defending ABB in relation to the BritNed damages claim, acting for Mastercard in its defence of the Merricks class action, and defending actions arising from the Trucks infringement. Nicholas has also advised extensively on benchmark rate conduct, including LIBOR, and advises leading tech companies in relation to claims arising from alleged competition infringements.
Nicholas also has significant claimant and defence experience from other commercial and class disputes, cartel, abuse of dominance, merger litigation and damages cases relating to products such as gas insulted switchgear, rail services, power cables, marine hoses, chemicals newspapers, the digital economy/TMT and envelopes and has appeared in arbitrations and before the EU courts on several occasions.
Nicholas has been highly ranked by directories for a number of years, including Chambers, Who's Who and Expert Guides, with Who's Who describing Nicholas, who is at the "forefront of developing case strategy", as "one of the best in the business when it comes to running high-profile multi-jurisdictional cases". Nicholas is also an honorary associate professor at Exeter University and has been a UK Observer to the United Nations - focusing on competition policy.
He is a native Swedish speaker, and also has French, Russian, Danish and Norwegian language skills.
Recent work
- Acting for a financial services client in its defence of multijurisdictional cartel and conduct-related investigations.
- Defending an OEM in relation to multi-jurisdictional claims arising from the trucks infringement.
- Representing Mastercard in an ongoing UK class action. Read more about the litigation in our case study.
- Representing ABB in its defence against NGET’s claim for damages relating to the gas-insulated switchgear and cables cartels.
- Advising TMT clients in relation to bringing antitrust claims/complaints internationally.
- Acting for significant TMT and industrial clients in relation to commercial disputes arising from M&A activity and COVID.
Qualifications
Education
- St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, UK (BA in jurisprudence)
- King's College London, UK (LLM)
- Universities of Lund and Uppsala, Sweden (Russian language studies)
- Honorary Associate Professor, Exeter University